Toyota's Recall Regarding The Accelerator Pedals

Toyota was thought to be the best quality car in the 1970s and 1980s but, due to Japanese competition, American car manufactures soon began to close the rankings gap. At the top of their game in 2010, Toyota had to stop manufacturing and order a large recall of automobiles. While leadership was probably considered great at the height of Toyota’s success, changes were obviously needed during the recall period and management needed to be as adaptable to those changing conditions. The only thing regarded as permanent in a market economy is change

One of the biggest recalls in the recent history of Toyota was the North America, China and Europe that was experienced in January 2010. This recall was associated with the sticking and slow-to-return accelerator pedals. Later on in February 2010, Toyota announced yet another recall that was global and related to the anti braking system software program in some major brands like Prius.

Toyota grew at a record speed and could not keep up with the speed in which it was growing. They are a centralized company and Japan only made the decisions. This prevented the company to keep up with the safety problems. The process that Toyota external suppliers follow when improving product and making sure the product is functioning properly before shipping to Toyota needs to be improved before they release the product from their warehouse to be sent to Toyota. This problem began when the company started to rapidly grow. Toyota’s lack of communication led to the faulty gas pedal recall.

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

Takata Latest News & Update: Aggressive Recall To 42 Million Vehicles With Defective Airbags Including Tesla, Ferrari, McLaren

On April 1st, 2014 in Washington D.C., General Motors (GM) Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra testified in front of a panel of senators regarding the company’s late delay in addressing a defect in ignition switches, causing cars to lose power and injuring or killing the drivers. While GM has issued a recall on cars that are known to have this defective product, the problem lies in the delay of action on the part of GM, who are accused of knowing about the defect as early as 2001.

The world’s largest and most profitable automaker on the back of a rock-solid reputation for quality and dependability is now being questionable as a horrifying car crash occurred in southern California in August, 2003. After that crash, Hotrod was forced to announce the suspension of sale of vehicles which is likely to cost the company and its dealers a minimum of $54 million a day in lost sales revenue.

Soon after, under pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Toyota did recall some vehicles. Nevertheless, only one month later, four more lives were ended as a result of Toyotas quality plunge and failure to respond. Finally, one month after the death of its eighth victim, Toyota halted production to stop and fix the problem. On top of the oil sludge recalls, this quality failure resulted in another 8.8 million recalls, a $2 billion direct financial hit to Toyota plus another $16.8 million in fines, too many innocent lives, a strained relationship with the NHTSA, and further brand deterioration (Greto et al., 2010).

Takata is being fined over their faulty airbags and it seems that corporate had planned this out from the beginning. Takata had more than one opportunity to report their airbags as defective, but rather took a risk and are now facing fines. Takara could have made a lot of money off the defective airbags and now have to give a small portion of it away to fines. Large car companies such as Toyota and Ford, are recalling their vehicles due to the faulty airbags. Takata now faces a bigger problem. If

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

The purpose of this report is to examine if the reasoning behind well-known car manufacturer, Toyota’s loss of revenue and leading market position is alone as a result of extensive product recalls following a fatal crash of a Lexus ES 350 on August 28th 2009. The journal article, “Toyota Crisis: Management Issue?” (Yuanyuan Feng 2010) provides an outline of the key factors that triggered the 2009 Toyota crisis, and explores whether the fall in the company’s returns by 19% were caused purely as a result of the recall and safety concerns, or something much deeper.

In 2009 Toyota Motors (TM) posted a net loss of $4.6 billion ("Market watch," 2014). From 2009 to 2011 Toyota encountered a number of factors contributing to their economic downturn. It began with recalling millions of vehicles, for quality related problems, followed by natural disasters hitting northeastern Japan. These disasters wiped out Toyota’s production capabilities (Tabuchi & Vlasic, 2014). While these events were occurring, the cloud of the 2008 global financial crisis was still being felt. This crisis weakened demand in the automotive industry. This weakened demand increased the competitive landscape for all automotive manufactures. This drove down automotive prices and effectively contribution margins (i.e. sold less

Toyota has long been regarded as the pinnacle of Japanese innovation, manufacturing quality and an industrial pioneer (Yuanyuan Feng, 2010). In 2009 Toyota faced a lager scale crisis that was rulled to be the result of “malfunctioning floor mats”. This lead to mass recalls on many of their vehicles and the loss of thousands of dollars due to recall costs and legal bills. After more incidents arose it was found that the actual cause of the incidents was malfunctioning gas pedals and the original floor-pan design. In the time of crisis Toyota was blamed for misreading and mishandling the situation resulting in major losses both financially and in their reputation to buyers.

Toyota is a key player in global automotive market. Its structure constitutes if various production plants in different locations and a very strong branding which helps it capture a major market share. Like other enterprises, Toyota has several strengths and weakness which makes it what it is now. Toyota heavily invests in Research and development which helps it come up reputable product line which is spread out throughout the world because of its strengthening global distribution network however its recent product recalling, loose grip in key geographic areas and wrong allocation of resources shows that even a strong brand like Toyota has its weaknesses.

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