Toyota Supplier Relations: Fixing the Suprima Chassis

It is important that Toyota improve their communication and process of evaluating their parts because if they don’t they risk losing customers and market shares. An improved process would also give them reassures that this issue does not arise again. According to Porter (1996) “Delivering greater value allows a company to charge a higher average unit price; greater efficiency result in lower average unit cost” (p.62). Toyota needs to focus more on quality than quantity. After quality is critiqued then they can continue to grow at a lower rate. If Toyota gives their North American companies power to make decisions than it would be a huge improvement to the companies and less risk of safety issues.

Yet, the public perceptions may be at odds with the objective measures. In Toyota’s case, there have been indications that the quality level of the company’s products had fallen off in a span of few years. There are changes that have taken place during a period when most of the company’s close competitors, such as Fords, were producing more cost-effective and efficient automobiles. In addition, the company’s unique production approach and the emphasis on continuous improvement and learning coupled with a matrix structure are key reasons for the company’s leadership in the cat manufacturing industry. Toyota’s Production Systems (TPS) was founded in the principles of “Just-in-time. This approach has less opportunity for slack resources and focuses of the benefits of efficiency on the part of employees and reduction on waste resources (Griffin and Gregory, 5). Further, Toyota Company enacts its production system with the assistance of its human resources strategies, culture, and organizational structure. Toyota’s Production System emphasizes on learning and modesty when it comes to assessing past success and differentiated them from

Due to Toyota’s financial greed and unethical practice, vehicles were wrongly equipped with faulty brakes, sticking pedals and poor quality door looks, which caused death of many Toyota customers and hundreds of dollars in damages. When a company like Toyota acts in an ethically questionable manner, it causes the company to lose customers and develop a negative reputation. Customer tend to lose faith in the company and have to look for better service

Toyota uses processes that are both implicit and explicit. Toyota’s operations are enormously flexible and responsive to customer demand. According to ASHP Foundation (2007). Many credit Toyota’s success to aspects of the Toyota Production System, established by Taïchi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo from the late 1950s through 1970 (when it gained the name). It includes aspects of Jidoka, just-in-time production, and kaizen, reducing both inventories and defects. The system is used worldwide, but is only one of the reasons for Toyota’s success. The very rigidity of the operations that makes the flexibility possible. That’s because the company’s operations can be seen as a continuous series of controlled tests.

Toyota must keep on producing vehicles that car customers want to buy. They must figure out what these buyers demand in a car. Once they tackle this then they can be successful, but if they don’t produce what they buyers want then they will not reach their goals.

Toyota’s superior technology was not enough in light of the recent recalls. As a result they had to reduce their organizational structure, which is no easy task. My observation is that Toyota could have closed a blind eye but instead decided to restructure and fix the problem without deviating from their core competency and mission.

Toyota’s manufacturing techniques, the specifics of the Toyota production system have allowed the company to operate at a greater level of efficiency than its competitors. The lastly is about that continuous improvement. Thus, Toyota has been able to sustain a competitive advantage by utilizing a tangible resource that is rare and not easily imitable.

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.

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.

Toyota has identified specific strategy is to achieve simultaneously high quality, low cost, short lead times,

With the recent Toyota recall of a well-known model due to quality problems, the risky shift phenomena were partly responsible for the huge outcry for and against Toyota. There were the ambassadors who claimed that Toyota did the right thing by taking in and refitting the quality-problem parts; and then there were the opposing realists who claimed that Toyota has lost their touch, as they always claimed quality and reliability, and were in the first instance trying to cover up and lie about the defect on the model. Therefore it is safe to assume that consumers behaviour were affected by

In 2015, Toyota defended their lead in sales ahead of Volkswagen (The Telegraph, 2015). Toyota developed cost advantages with their "production system", Volkswagen found it difficult to replicate such optimisation due to union pressure rife in Germany (De Moraes, 2016: 465). Furthermore, to defend their title, Toyota adopted strategies of lean manufacturing, strict supplier control and highly efficient distribution (Schonberger, 1994).

Toyota changed their factory layout. Previously all machines of the same type, e.g. presses, were together in the same area of the factory. This meant that items had to be transported back and forth as they needed processing on different machines. To eliminate this transportation different machines were clustered together so items could move smoothly from one machine to another as they were processed. This meant that workers had to become skilled on more than one machine - previously workers were skilled at operating just one type of machine. Although this initially met resistance from the workforce it was eventually

Toyota has always stressed the importance of environmental care and the reliability on their safe and quality cars. Since 1992 adopted a set of Guiding Principles, focused on “providing clean and safe products

One potential threat for Volkswagen is that Toyota may respond strategically by also cutting its prices. However, given Toyota’s quality problems over the past year, they will not be able to lower prices, as this possibly would create the perception of lower quality.. First and foremost, Toyota needs to ensure it handles its quality problems to its customers’ satisfaction. The auto maker needs to ensure the public perception is that Toyota is being upfront, honest, and responsible in dealing with recalls and the