We don’t just learn from our mistakes, but from the mistakes of other as well. This we do not learn from school.
The recall surely hit hard Toyota and a painful one as it caused damages not just in their image in the US but in many nations as well. But really went wrong? Toyota Motor may or may not agree but I learn a lot while reading the expert analysis.
Experts say that one of the obvious reasons is Toyota Motors failure to adjust its corporate structure as the company grew to become the world’s largest automaker. I’m sure Toyota is doing its damage control. It seems they overlooked the basic fundamental for growing and mega businesses. Other commentat1 believes that Toyota forget what the Toyota Way is all about. Let us analyze in line with what the experts have said:
Accelerator Pedal Mechanism (car part being blamed). As per traced records, Toyota Motors started to source back-up supplier on 1997 after a fire that hit their long time Japanese brake supplier’s factory. They used to source only from Denso of Japan due to its high standard produced and closed ties. Now they are also getting from CTS of Elkhart, India.
Per sourced report, the Denso and CTS mechanisms use different wiring harnesses. Somewhere along the way or someone from Toyota Motors had lapses in counter checking to ensure that identical parts from two suppliers were, in fact, identical. Although the same design is being use, the fact that the CTS part apparently developed defects and the Denso part did not, suggests there were other differences.
Management action in coordination with customer service report. Analyst also found out that Toyota in North America still uses an old school type of reporting. They basically did not change their system on reporting since they started operating in North America half century ago. Toyota California did received complaints but the report may have been reported first to Japan sales headofquarters. There the inc-charge executives may have send issues to the concerned department for a fix for a period of time. For a while, the communication is being floated until it reaches Toyota US again. To make it short, analyst mentioned that if Toyota Motors had an integrated headquarters in North America, with one person in charge of sales, engineering, and manufacturing, the complaints might have been communicated almost instantaneously and the fixing of the problem may not be that long as what is happening. Thus, image damaging issues blown into proportion may have been prevented. This is actually a management call.
Cost-cutting against quality of products and services. Toyota Motors surely has its reasons for the cost-cutting measures they ask of their suppliers since December of 2009. Another reason seen was the supplier’s counter action against the 30% reduction of parts cost requested by Toyota over the next three years. Earlier cost cutting measures was implemented around 2005.
CTS reiterated that it complied in accordance to Toyota standards. Surely, it will defend its image but the reality on exessive wear is inevitable. Nonethess, Toyota Motors is doing its damage cotrol by working together with CTS on pedals that meet “tougher” specifications
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