Toyota Operations Improvement Plan Essay

Toyota Company was established in the year 1937. Its main activities are the production of vehicles and sales. With its headquarters based in Japan, Toyota has employed over three hundred thousand employees. Toyota Company belongs to the motor vehicle industry where competition is tight even though Toyota is leading on the number of vehicles being sold on a daily basis. Toyota operates in 51 countries worldwide.

Toyota has hit the headlines over the years over the defects in several of their models which has sent it on a public relations and safety campaigns relating to its vehicles. Notably is the Toyota safety campaign in North America for certain models of Toyota as well as Lexus brands concerning the floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedals, later on it extended to other models in November 2009.

One of the main errors leading to this situation was the fact that ChassisCo didn’t follow on the Toyota principle of giving the bad news up front. Toyota stated with every supplier that they expected a swift alert in case any risks were to arise, in order to tackle root causes and diminish the problems right away. On the same line, Toyota knew that the manufacturing process for the

Global demand for cars increase every year. As a result, car manufacturers focus on producing quality cars in record breaking times and speed. However, as a result there are manufacturing mistakes that result in serious injuries and deaths. Below introduces the worst automaker offenders and most recent high profile vehicle recalls.

The compact Chevrolet Cruze also had a worrying fire-related recall, which affected every single model sold. Missteps like these seem to be common for domestic automakers. (1)

In May of 2006, The Toyota Motor Corporation initiated a recall of nearly one million vehicles around the world to replace faulty parts that could cause drivers to lose control of the steering wheel. The recall affected vehicles across 10 models, including the popular Prius. The intermediate shafts and sliding yokes in the recalled cars lacked the necessary strength and could distort or crack under strong pressure, causing drivers to lose control of the steering wheel, according to Toyota (ConsumerAffairs.Com). Owners of these vehicles were allowed to have these defects repaired at the cost of Toyota and required approximately on hour to complete (News.com.au).

Of high concern to both our team and consumers looking to purchase a new vehicle is the issue with vehicle recalls. As cited from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) , vehicle recalls have trended upward over the past several years to 51 million vehicles being affected in 2015, 64 million in 2014, 22.1 million in 2013, and 16.5 million in 201226. Within Toyota’s competitors, Toyota is the fourth-largest number of recalls number of vehicles in 2014, totaling just 5.9 million vehicles . For a perspective, General Motors recalled 28.83 million vehicles over the same span, Honda recalled 9.04 million, and Ford recalled 4.78 million vehicles. Though Toyota has had a history with large recalls, more recently they seem to

Considering the case study, Toyota’s current reputation and status in the global market is marked with recalls due to defective parts, malfunctions and safety risks—numerous lawsuits—and fines

Toyota has been one of the most trusted and dependable names in the automobile business. In late August 2009, Mark Saylor, an off duty cop, was traveling in Southern California with three of his family members, when his 2009 Lexus ES350 started to accelerate on its own. One of his family members called 911 and said the car had no brakes and they were going well over 100 mph. Mark’s car would hit another car and fall down an embankment where it would catch fire and kill everyone in the car. Investigating started and in mid the late September investigators believed the cause of the accident was wrong floor mats might have been installed in Mark Saylor’s Lexus. This was a shock to the US consumers that wrong floor mats were leading to fiery crashes. Toyota decided in late September that they were going to recall 4.2 million Toyota’s and Lexus because of faulty floor mats and sticky gas pedals. In October of 2009 the LA times published several stories that involved the accelerator problem with Toyota. There were nine separate investigating done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), five cases that resulted in fatalities, and hundreds of complaints filed to the federal government. Toyota being one the best automobiles in the world let this go by the way side and it cost them dearly.

An inconvenient truth arises when consumer products fail to operate as they were intended to. When purchasing a large item such as an automobile, consumers anticipate their investments to function properly and safely. However as witnessed over the years, producers and manufacturers are hit with product recalls frequently. A product recall is the process of retrieving and replacing defective goods for consumers. When a company recalls a product, the company or manufacturer absorb the cost of replacing and fixing defective products for consumers. For large companies, the costs of repairing faulty merchandise can accumulate to multi-billion dollar losses. Notably car manufacturers Toyota (TM), General Motors (GM), and Honda (HMC)

The main topic of the case was the problems caused by defective or damaged seats. TMM USA's seat problem was threefold. The first was the actual defects with the hooks and the damaged caused by cross threading by employees when installing the seats. This problem led to the second problem, which was the departure from the Toyota Production System (TPS) when dealing with the seat problem. Rather than fix the problem with the seat when it happened, they continued with the car's production and worried about the seat afterwards. And this led to the third problem, a build up of cars with seat problems in the off-line operation area.

• Subsequent to the recalls associated with floor mats and sticky pedals causing unintended acceleration, Toyota had 14 safety related recalls through Sept. 2010. • These highly publicized recalls may well have solidified in the U.S. public’s mind that Toyota has serious quality problems.

The auto industry is one in which innovation is key. Competition, primarily with the low cost producers creates an industry with low margins, high fixed costs, and intense rivalries. In many instances, as soon explained, cost cutting is the only natural alternative for many auto companies navigating in a very cyclical industry. The auto industry has seen many turbulent periods prior to 2008. The very nature of the auto industry is that of various cycles of optimism and pessimism on the part of the consumer. Toyota is no different in this regard. Of late, economic uncertainty has created cost pressures on many auto companies. These auto companies, pressed for demand for their cars, are now attempting to cut costs to offset lost revenue. Typically, during economic pessimism and recession, auto sales decline as consumers have less discretionary income. However, due primarily to Toyotas quality and organizational structure, the company has continued to grow. However, the company's relentless tenacity in regards to cost structure is now resulting in massive recalls of many of its more popular vehicles. I believe, this tenacity, which was once a competitive strength of Toyota is now causing it to recall many of its cars. Through its extensive reorganization, the company has seemingly sacrificed quality relative to its peers in the industry (Dawson, 2004).

The Toyota Motor Corporate failed to respond to the crisis proactively, forced to recall 3.8 million vehicles related to weather floor mat, two months after the crash. “The initial crisis response should be delivered in the first hour after a crisis and be vetted for accuracy” (W. Timothy Coombs, 2007), attorneys and congress were unpleased by methods of use from Toyota. On August 28, 2009, a fatal car collision killed four people from the family who are riding in a Lexus ES-350 on San Diego highway, raised the attentions and forced National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) collaborated with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and decided to reopen investigation on Toyota floor mat problem (NHTSA, 2011). Toyota claims the all-weather floor mats were solely at fault, published a letter showing that there is no defect exists in vehicles, “NHTSA also confirms that no defect exists in vehicles in which the driver’s

Q1..Possibly influencing discriminating parts such as reputation, image, mark equity, credibility, publicity, monetary viability, legitimacy, Group standing, and so on. (Smudde, 2001). Done auto business vehicle recalls happen constantly and all over. However, the Toyota massine recalls indicate a different circumstance and includes All the more genuine results. We need seen that very nearly 9 million for Toyota vehicles around the globe required should a chance to be recalled inside a couple months, and the possibly faulty caliber included were principally concentrated ahead unintended acceleration problems, which were nearly identified with the practically critical thing to drivers – wellbeing crashing. It’s Therefore hard should think that there might have been nothing off for Toyota’s “quality” autos. The huge recalls were Surely An catastrophe to Toyota: not main implies that they needed to pay for the extensively budgetary misfortunes because of repairing costs, business Furthermore stock impart dropping down, handling suspending, common penalty, Furthermore different applicable liabilities for managing the troublesomeness issues; as well as it need vigorously hit to Toyota’s immaterial holding advantages – its brand picture Also notoriety for quality, which bring been morally formed About whether (Fill, 2006; Dolphin, 2004) Also thus impact the brand quality (Wang, 2005). In spite of the fact that swedish customers don 't fault Toyota itself that significantly to