Toyota Case

1. How might Toyota’s recent debacle impact its business operations around the globe? How could Toyota use what it has learned through this unfortunate circumstance to better their production? * The debacles as reported resulted in the recall of millions of Toyota cars in the US and other parts of the world. This has affected its financial performance, starting in 2009 and in the few years after that. Added to this is the tainting of its reputation as a producer of reliable and safe vehicles. These incidents resulted in financial loss for Toyota, the first time in decades that it incurred losses in its worldwide operations. To state that Toyota needs to improve its production system (Just-In-Time, Kanban system, TQM, Cellular Manufacturing, and Team Development) because of these cases may not be the proper approach. It should be noted that Toyota’s Production system is a model that is the envy of major manufacturing companies of the world. On the other hand, the fact that the problems have been persisting for as early as 2000 shows that there was a flaw in how information is filtered to the top, which would have alerted them to address the problems at its initial stage. As had been admitted by Mr. Toyoda, Toyota President, “the problem was rather with communications than quality itself.” This means that controls may have been limited to certain levels in management, which was relevant for top management to make a decision. This is possibly the result of an ardent desire of Toyota during the early part of the decade to grow rapidly and surpass General Motors as the no.1 car company in the world in terms of sales and production. This goal has blinded its management to maintain the practices that has made it the model of modern manufacturing.

* The growing number of accidents and complaints has demanded a deep analysis of their problem, which Toyoda identified as communication (internal) rather than quality. Prior to the recall, Toyota management had always