Essay on Toyota's Supply Chain Q&A

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.

In 2009 Toyota encountered a public backlash after the discovery of a potentially catastrophic engineering defect among its brand of automobiles including its best-selling Corolla and Camry models. This led to a massive and global recall of approximately 10 million units a year later. The engineering defect caused the models to accelerate out of control and put their drivers and other

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.

To better understand a firm and its placement of its strategies, we must conduct an analysis of factors that might affect its selection of strategies.

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)

Facts: General Motors (GM) recalled about 3 million worldwide of their small cars due to faulty ignition switches, which shuts off the engine while driving, thus preventing the airbags from inflating in case of an accident. General Motors paid compensation for 124 deaths, this fault had been know to GM for at least a decade prior to the recall being declared.

As of the date of this report, Takata is one of the largest recalls of any consumer product in U.S. history. Takata is an automotive parts company based in Japan. It has production facilities on the United States. More than 20 million vehicles are subject to recall in other countries. These events prompted Takata company to commission the independent Takata

As if this weren’t enough, quality problems mounted week after week. Only months later in February 2010, the NHTSA revealed that it had received claims citing another life threatening defect in the break system for the Toyota Prius. More than 400 thousand Prius recalls resulted. In April of 2010, customers reported handling issues in the Lexus brand which resulted in another recall of 9,400 Lexus cars and a “Don’t Buy: Safety Risk” rating from Consumer Reports. Also in April, the company voluntarily recalled Siennas to address a problem with corrosion on a spare tire cable. Later that month, Toyota voluntarily recalled 2003 Sequoia SUVs to improve the stability controls. 2010 Tacomas were also recalled for defective front drive shafts. Once the quality icon, Toyota had hit a really low point; so low that credit

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

Over the years, the U. S. auto industry's market has been experiencing fluctuations due to many reasons including: price, quality and foreign competition. General Motors Corporation (GM) which had been the leading car and truck manufacturer had been experiencing declining market share and facing stiff competition from both U.S manufacturers and foreign imports such as the Asian auto producers that included Toyota, Honda and Nissan. The main reason for increased foreign competition was that foreign cars were more fuel efficient, smaller, less expensive, and often more reliable than their American counterparts.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A. (TMM) is deviating from the standard assembly line principle of jidoka in an attempt to avoid expenses incurred from stopping the production line for seat quality defects. This deviation has contributed to the inability to identify the root cause of the problem, which has led to decreased run ratios on the line and an excess of defective automobiles in the overflow lot for multiple days. If this problem isn’t fixed quickly, an increased amount of waste will continue to be incurred and customer value will be threatened.

The second issue is the pedal brake, which caused numerous accidents reported by Toyota’s consumers. For example, on February 2010, there was an accident occurred

Toyota today is one of the leading lean example in today’s manufacturing market. Starting back in the 1930’s with the idea of Just-in-Time to cut down cost in waste from overstocked storage rooms to a better efficient assembly lines who produced what was needed at a certain time. The Kanban system is one of the most used methods that the Japanese found during the 1950’s during a trip to United States in a super market.

Supply chain management (SCM) is a core part of organizational effectiveness in order to achieve goals characterizes efficiency. Globalization and international agreement led Toyota to develop it is SCM process to increase outsourcing supply raw materials from foreign market that are low cost and high quality.

This assignment gives the overview of the Toyota and Volkswagen. It also explains about their supply chain relationship of those manufacturers. It also gives the advantages and disadvantages of those companies. I have also compared the strategies of Toyota and Volkswagen. I have collected some details regarding the future scope and threats for both the manufacturers. I have given some general statistics of both the companies. Then I have given some future strategies of those concerns.