Toyota Case
Quality Management Prof. Sónia Dahab October 4th, 2012
Angelika Ojdana #988 Beatrice Lagrasta #995 Carolina Martins #928 Joana Nunes #882 Nicholas Vijverman #1139 Norma Greco #1143
1
Sakichi Toyoda was born in 1867 and in the 1900’s he founded the Toyoda group, a company focused on the production of looms for the textile business. In 1933, under the influence of his son Kiichiro Toyoda, who was more interested in automobiles, Sakichi opened a new division focused on car manufacturing.It was in 1937 that there was a separation between the two businesses and consequently Toyota Motor Company was born. In order to get a deeper understanding over the industry, Kiichiro studied the production system of Ford, the leading car manufacturing company at that time, and later adopted and improved it. Ten years later, in 1947, Toyota started to produce large-scale passenger cars, competing with Ford and General Motors but suffered from Japan’s economy that was going through a rough patch after the Second World War. In the beginning of the 1950’s Eiji Toyoda became president and developed a different process, the Just-in-time system and in the mid 1950’s the Kanban. The company entered the American market in 1958, but only had its first success there in 1968 with the model Corolla and in the 1990’s expanded to other places throughout the world. Throughout the last few years, Toyota, General Motors (GM) and Volkswagen (VW) have been the three main players competing in the automobile industry. In 2011, GM was the leader with 9.03 million dollars of sales, followed by VW with 8.16 million dollars in sales and finally Toyota with 7.9 million dollars. However, these results can be partly explained by not only the 2009-2010 recalls but also the Japanese tsunami and the Thailand floods that affected the supply of car parts. These results don’t mean that Toyota cannot make a comeback, opposed to that, data from the 1st quarter of 2012 shows that Toyota is the leader in sales,
Angelika Ojdana #988 Beatrice Lagrasta #995 Carolina Martins #928 Joana Nunes #882 Nicholas Vijverman #1139 Norma Greco #1143
1
Sakichi Toyoda was born in 1867 and in the 1900’s he founded the Toyoda group, a company focused on the production of looms for the textile business. In 1933, under the influence of his son Kiichiro Toyoda, who was more interested in automobiles, Sakichi opened a new division focused on car manufacturing.It was in 1937 that there was a separation between the two businesses and consequently Toyota Motor Company was born. In order to get a deeper understanding over the industry, Kiichiro studied the production system of Ford, the leading car manufacturing company at that time, and later adopted and improved it. Ten years later, in 1947, Toyota started to produce large-scale passenger cars, competing with Ford and General Motors but suffered from Japan’s economy that was going through a rough patch after the Second World War. In the beginning of the 1950’s Eiji Toyoda became president and developed a different process, the Just-in-time system and in the mid 1950’s the Kanban. The company entered the American market in 1958, but only had its first success there in 1968 with the model Corolla and in the 1990’s expanded to other places throughout the world. Throughout the last few years, Toyota, General Motors (GM) and Volkswagen (VW) have been the three main players competing in the automobile industry. In 2011, GM was the leader with 9.03 million dollars of sales, followed by VW with 8.16 million dollars in sales and finally Toyota with 7.9 million dollars. However, these results can be partly explained by not only the 2009-2010 recalls but also the Japanese tsunami and the Thailand floods that affected the supply of car parts. These results don’t mean that Toyota cannot make a comeback, opposed to that, data from the 1st quarter of 2012 shows that Toyota is the leader in sales,