It’s Friday and as usual the Tweetscape is busy, busy, busy. Someone, not without vested interest, it must be said, has Tweeted us this recent blog from Automobile linking Toyota with Audi.
You decide who’s right, who’s wrong….
Posts Tagged ‘Toyota’
How to Improve Software Quality: Lessons from Toyota’s Debacle
July 12th, 2010 |
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Software testing should be part of a much larger process for software quality assurance. When complex systems are built from many subsystems, it’s vital to understand, measure and manage the software quality assurance process for all systems from end to end. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black discusses software quality and testing lessons that IT professionals should learn from the debacle that recently befell Toyota. – How the mighty have fallen. Starting in the 1980s, Japanese companies became legendary for quality and none more legendary than Toyota. But earlier this year, Toyota led the news due to quality problems. The situation was so severe that Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda personally appeared at a Congressional h…
Tesla and Toyota
May 25th, 2010 |
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Never a dull moment at Tesla is there? And I’m not even talking about some of the soap opera stuff that seems to follow Elon Musk around. Toyota is now taking a stake. Daimler is already in there, also. And the firm wants to make cars at the now defunct NUMMI plant in California.
The big challenge ahead for Tesla Motors is the cost curve and getting the volume to bring unit costs down. A few boutique roadsters is one thing, but the plan has always been to take the technology into higher volume territory. Can Tesla do that on its own? Or would it like to work with an OEM that can bring volume and production expertise to bear on major components? And how far would it take that relationship with a major OEM, particularly as the cost pressures become increasingly evident?
As one of our forum contributors wryly notes, don’t be too surprised to see a production Model S bearing some similarities to something made by Toyota!
Oh, something I came across that’s worth a look - a Tesla at Goodwood last month.
Toyota JV to launch diesel variants of Etios hatchback and sedan cars in India by the end of 2010
April 29th, 2010 |
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With day to day hike in prices of petroleum in India, the common man is running towards the diesel cars that can save some at their pockets. And observing this demand, the Toyota Kirloskar JV is planning to launch the diesel variants of Etios hatchback and sedan cars in India.
Both these cars will be [...]
Toyota to recall 34,000 vehicles worldwide
April 20th, 2010 |
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Toyota Motor Corp announced Tuesday that the world’s largest automaker would recall about 34,000 vehicles worldwide to update the stability software programme.
The recall affects all Lexus GX 460 sport utility vehicles sold throughout the world, including about 9,400 units in the US and about 1,000 units each in Russia and Oman.
It also includes around 21,000 [...]
Toyota recalls Sienna minivans
April 17th, 2010 |
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Toyota has announced a voluntary recall of some 600,000 Sienna minivans in the US and 270,000 in Canada because of safety concerns about potential corrosion in its spare tyre carrier.
The recall applies to certain models of the van from 1998 to 2010 that were driven in cold climates where road salt may have cause corrosion, [...]
Toyota to recall 13,000 cars in South Korea
April 6th, 2010 |
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Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp said Tuesday it was to recall 13,000 vehicles in South Korea, following an order by the Transportation Ministry.
Hisao Nakabayashi, the head of Toyota’s South Korean unit, offered an apology for the company’s slow reaction to local concerns about potential safety risks involving floor mats and accelerator pedals.
“There is an extremely [...]
Toyota ‘runaway a hoax’
March 16th, 2010 |
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The latest media speculation is that the guy with the out of control Prius he couldn’t stop – the story in the US that recently attracted so much attention and which Toyota said it would investigate – is some kind of hoaxster.
Toyota has pretty forcefully said its investigation’s findings are inconsistent with Mr Sikes’ account.
The below clip gives a flavour of which way the US media bandwagon is lurching today. Gotta love the anchor’s ‘Peter Falk moment’ digression near the end. He just had to explain who Peter Falk was. He just about managed to leave out the shabby raincoat and cigar.
US: Prius driver’s account “inconsistent” with Toyota’s study
Runaway Prius Spells New Trouble For Toyota
March 9th, 2010 |
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Just weeks after Toyota supposedly found a solution to their accelerator problems, a Toyota Prius sped uncontrollably down a California road due to a stuck accelerator. A San Diego man says his 2008 Toyota hybrid raced out of control for more than 30 miles [...]
The machine that ran too hot
February 24th, 2010 |
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The woes of Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, are a warning for rivals
AS EXECUTIVES from Toyota, including the firm’s boss, Akio Toyoda, squirmed before their tormentors in America’s Congress this week, there was little public gloating from rival carmakers. Although it is Toyota that is currently in the dock after a crushing series of safety-related recalls across the world, competitors are only too aware that it could be their turn next. After all, there is not a single big carmaker that has not modelled its manufacturing and supply-chain management on Toyota’s “lean production” system.
That said, there is a widespread belief within the car industry that Toyota is the author of most of its own misfortunes and that its mistakes hold lessons for others. In testimony delivered to the House oversight committee on Wednesday February 24th, Mr Toyoda, the carmaker’s boss, acknowledged that in its pursuit of growth Toyota stretched its lean philosophy close to breaking point and in so doing had become “confused” about some of the principles that first made it great: its focus on putting the customer’s satisfaction above all else and its ability “to stop, think and make improvements”. …
If you can keep your head…
February 22nd, 2010 |
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Learning new things is one of life’s little joys. If you had asked me at the beginning of last week what a ‘double McTwist 1260′ was, I’d have probably guessed it was something to do with a well known fast food chain. It is not. It is the name for a snowboarding manoeuvre that involves quite a bit of twisting and flipping. I am not all that into winter sports, but the guy who pulled that one off in Vancouver last week had my undivided attention and considerable admiration (he already had the gold and didn’t even have to do it). As, indeed, did some of the other competitors in other events.
I guess the thing is, whether you are a winter sports fan or not, the competition for Olympic medals is about human endeavour and competition on an epic scale. People train for years and then push themselves to the absolute limit. The guys who failed spectacularly in the two-man bob also got my attention last week. It had all gone horribly wrong for them but, again, I guess we can empathise on a certain level.
We have all failed at something at some time or another and we have hopefully learned something from that experience. Saying sorry and working hard to correct something that has gone wrong occasionally goes with this territory.
Dealing with Kipling’s ‘two imposters’ of triumph and disaster is a part of life, whoever you are and whatever business you are in. And sometimes it’s how you deal with the bad stuff that is particularly important; how you cope in a crisis can be more revealing about character than how you milk the plaudits in the good times.
Toyota president Akio Toyoda – new to the job last year – has had a pretty tough time of late and I would assume that his decision-making is governed by what he believes is in the best interests of his company and its customers. And of course, he is no doubt in receipt of plenty of good advice and wise counsel from his close associates.
He also needs to bear in mind how things are perceived and how the media interprets things. Sometimes the media is unfair in the way it treats things and we have seen plenty of evidence of that here in the UK since the ‘Toyota recalls’ story first broke last month. The media – in the broadest sense – is on the case and some of the nuances of what a recall actually is, quality versus safety concerns and so on, have been a little lost at times – especially in the non-specialist media.
To some degree, it is a no-win situation for Toyota. The bad PR is already out there and the priority is to limit damage and repair confidence (among customers, dealers, suppliers, employees) as soon as possible. Storms do eventually move off. Dire situations become less dire if you do the right things. Do Mercedes-Benz customers today worry about the firm’s serious quality troubles of a few years ago? No. It was very effectively dealt with.
If there was ever a time for effective and decisive leadership at Toyota it is now. And anything that can be interpreted as prevarication or indecision – however unfair that interpretation may in fact be – is certainly not going to be helping.
US: Toyota confirms recall document subpoenas as president flies in
Toyota considers recall of top-selling Corolla
February 18th, 2010 |
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Toyota’s safety crisis deepened yesterday as the embattled Japanese giant said it was considering a recall of its Corolla, the world’s best-selling car, because of possible steering problems. Toyota also announced that it would fit all new models with a system to cut engine power when the driver
Toyota shares lag on US output cuts, recovery
February 17th, 2010 |
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Toyota Motor Corp shares lagged a strong rise in other Japanese auto stocks on Wednesday after the world’s biggest automaker said it would shut down production at two of its US factories to match slowing sales. The planned shutdown at its Kentucky and Texas plants for a total of at
It’s not stopping…
February 9th, 2010 |
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More recalls deliver further blows to Toyota’s battered reputation
ANNOUNCING the latest recall of Toyota vehicles, Akio Toyoda, the company’s chief executive, invoked the principle of genchi genbutsu, an integral part of the car company’s production system. It urges managers to experience problems for themselves rather than relying on reports and then attempting a fix one or two steps removed. On Tuesday February 9th Toyota said that it would recall over 400,000 Prius and other hybrid vehicles worldwide to address problems with their brakes. Later Mr Toyoda promised that he will shortly visit America, the car company’s largest market, where he will see the damage to Toyota’s reputation for himself. Finding a fix is another matter entirely.
Recalling another few hundred thousand cars may seem to be only a moderate additional problem for a company that has already shocked customers with the recall of more than 8m vehicles worldwide. On its own the recall of new Priuses, some Lexus models and other hybrids would not have caused the company much anxiety. But coming on top of the recall of cars with accelerator pedals that can jam open, another over brake pedals that sometimes refuse to operate is dreadful. Even before the latest news Toyota put the cost of the recalls at $2 billion. The adverse publicity has hit sales in America, which plummeted by 16% in January compared with the year before. Its shares have fallen by some 20% since the recalls were announced last month. …
Parts commonality bites Toyota back
February 8th, 2010 |
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It wasn’t so long ago that Toyota’s progress seemed rather relentless. The company posted one set of record results after another. There has been something of a rude awakening lately on quality.
Maybe the firm has tried to grow a little too quickly. And there have been pressures to cut back on cost – which perhaps partly explains what has been going on with the recall.
One of the striking things about Toyota’s accelerator pedal problem is just how many vehicles are affected. The component is common across many Toyota models globally.
That’s how you get cost down, by employing vast scale economies on parts like that which can be described as ‘commodities’ – a part of the vehicle that is unseen and makes no difference to the end-product in terms of customer perception. It doesn’t need to be specified differently according to model, as an interior trim component that the customer sees and feels might be. The lower the cost, the better.
That’s all fine and dandy when there are no problems with the component or its design. But if anything goes wrong, the commonality of supply that got the unit-cost of the part so low becomes a double-edged sword: the fallout is wide.
I would guess that some other manufacturers are looking on with mixed feelings. Yes, they are probably feeling that Toyota taking a hit like this one provides a market opportunity for them, at least in the short-term. But they may also like to reflect on the dangers of global sourcing and scale economies.
The pressures for ‘cost-down’ have never been as big as they are these days and Toyota’s experience provides a warning on the risks that come with that.
Toyota to announce Prius recall this week: report
February 7th, 2010 |
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Toyota, reeling from safety woes that have sullied its reputation around the globe, will this week announce the recall of 300,000 Prius hybrid vehicles because of brake flaws, reports said Sunday. The move by the Japanese auto giant will affect the latest model of the Prius, a car beloved
Toyota’s troubles deepen: No quick fix
February 4th, 2010 |
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The damage to the world’s biggest carmaker may be lasting
SAFETY recalls are a common enough occurrence in the car industry. If handled correctly, few have long-term consequences for the manufacturer involved. However, the disaster now engulfing Toyota is of a different order. Not only is Toyota’s brief reign as the world’s largest carmaker threatened but, more important, so too is its reputation for matchless quality and management. Rivals that had grown used to living in the Japanese firm’s shadow are quietly celebrating.
Toyota’s decision last month to recall 2.3m vehicles in America and then to suspend sales and production of eight models with potential faulty accelerator pedals (it later took similar steps around the world, involving 8m vehicles) has sent shock waves through the industry. The good news was that Toyota announced on February 1st that it had come up with a cure for the sticking pedals which, along with badly fitting floor mats (the subject of another massive recall late last year), have been blamed for at least 19 deaths and more than 2,000 incidents of “unintended acceleration”. …
Toyota troubles
February 4th, 2010 |
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I heard Toyota GB’s PR man Scott Brownlee on the radio this morning being interviewed over the accelerator pedal recall. He gave a decent performance, responded clearly and confidently to the potentially awkward questions and it occurred to me that for the PR people at Toyota, it maybe feels a little bit like soldiers going off to the front line for the first time. No more phoney war. This is it; this is what we trained for. Helmets on.
This global recall on a safety-critical component has blown up like a squall out of nowhere to become the perfect storm that some commentators reckon will do great damage to Toyota. It is clearly a serious problem not to be belittled, but I wonder whether it will really do much long-term damage to Toyota sales. A lot depends on how quickly this issue is dealt with and how quickly a sense of business as usual at Toyota can be restored.
Can a reputation for industry leading quality and reliability built up over decades really be ruined overnight? A few people in the media are jumping on this particular bandwagon (and predictably taking some knee-jerk investors with them), but I’m not so sure.
For many, the idea that Toyota equals quality and reliability, even if it comes with a little blandness of product, is very deeply ingrained. It’s almost a given and it will take a fair bit of shifting. I’m not saying that cannot happen, just that we’re not there yet.
If Toyota can ride the initial bad PR (no escape from that) and get the pedal problem fixed quickly, the car-buying public may well view it as an outlier or blip, a one-off that was very effectively dealt with. It could even end up being viewed as a positive, a case study on how companies handle product-based PR nasties. In this admittedly optimistic scenario Toyota’s image is hardly dented and a short-term hit to sales is contained.
The eventual outcome may, of course, fall somewhere in the middle with the costs and sales fallout turning out worse than Toyota is planning for, but not as bad as the worst fears. By next year it’s becoming a fading bad memory; Toyota still a brand associated with generally good quality and reliability.
That word ‘containment’ is important. Any sense that there is more going on than just the accelerator pedal, that there are underlying quality and reliability issues at Toyota, would certainly impact long-term sales. Keep an eye on that Prius brakes situation. And things got ratcheted up a notch in the US yesterday with some politicians’ comments (always be wary of politicians wading in publicly over something like this).
Toyota has perhaps had its aura of invincibility on quality punctured a little in recent years with other recalls, but it is hardly a company devoid of good processes, a laggard among its peers or one that is instantly associated with poor quality product – far from it.
We’re too early into this recall to say that Toyota has royally screwed up and that’s done it, reputation for quality now in tatters. Crisis management and shaping perceptions will be key. It is all still to play for, Toyota’s managers and PR people very much in the heat of the battle.
Good article – below link – from special agent Coolbear looking at ‘Throttlegate’. He makes some very good points concerning Toyota’s overall strategic direction, cost-cutting dangers, the risks inherent in parts/design commonality across model ranges and the new emerging markets model – Etios.
No quick fix
February 4th, 2010 |
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The damage to Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, may be lasting
SAFETY recalls are a common enough occurrence in the car industry. If handled correctly, few have long-term consequences for the manufacturer involved. However, the disaster now engulfing Toyota is of a different order. Not only is Toyota’s brief reign as the world’s largest carmaker threatened but, more important, so too is its reputation for matchless quality and management. Rivals that had grown used to living in the Japanese firm’s shadow are quietly celebrating.
Toyota’s decision last month to recall 2.3m vehicles in America and then to suspend sales and production of eight models with potential faulty accelerator pedals (it later took similar steps around the world, involving 8m vehicles) has sent shock waves through the industry. The good news was that Toyota announced on February 1st that it had come up with a cure for the sticking pedals which, along with badly fitting floor mats (the subject of another massive recall late last year), have been blamed for at least 19 deaths and more than 2,000 incidents of “unintended acceleration”. …
Toyota recalls 180,865 vehicles in Britain: reports
February 4th, 2010 |
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Toyota is recalling tens of thousands of cars in Britain amid a mounting worldwide crisis over faulty accelerator pedals that has rocked the Japanese auto giant, media reported Thursday. A total of 180,865 vehicles might be affected by the problem, according to newspaper reports, and the