Toyota’s
Triumph and Waterloo

The rank of Toyota in Global 500
• 2007 – 2013, Toyota was the biggest motor ve hicle manufacturer in the world.
• Followed by General Motors Corporation and
Ford Motor Company (Fortune, 2014).

Source: Google.com

The other automobile manufacturers

Source: www.nstechnologies.co.in

Sakichi Toyoda
• In 1890’s, Sakichi Toyo da invented the wood en hand loom and rec eived a patent for it.
• He kept improving the loom in his whole life and invented power l oom. (Toyota-global, 2
012)
Source: www.toyota-global.com

A wooden Toyoda hand loom

Toyoda power loom
(Japan’s first self-powered loom)

Source: www.toyota-global.com

The founder of Toyota
– Kiichiro Toyoda
• The eldest son of Sakichi Toyo da • Spent his childhood in his fath er’s textile factory
• Studied in engineering, law an d social system in the universi ty • Took over the company when he was 27 years old (in 1921)
(Toyota-global, 2012)
Source: www.toyota-global.com

The found of Toyota
• Establishment: 1926
• Capital: 80,462 billion yen
• Main business: Manufact ure and sale of textile ma chinery, automobiles, ind ustrial vehicles and other products. (Toyota-global,
2012)

Source: www.toyota-global.com

The development of Toyota

Source: www.toyota-global.com

Source: www.toyota-global.com

Source: www.toyota-global.com

The expansion of Toyota

As of 2012
Source: www.toyota-global.com

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYFB1rKHdqo

Toyota’s Production System (TPS)
• TPS is a unique system of producing vehicles d eveloped by Toyota
• The goal is to make and deliver vehicles in the quickest and most efficient way.
• Also known as “The Toyota Way” or “Lean Pro duction” Source: www.ehuub.com

Toyota's Japan and Overseas Production and Sales Volumes

Source: www.toyota-global.com

A massive car recall
• In August, 2009, a fatal car accident happened in C alifornia, the US
• The floormats affected the car braking systems
• Toyota recalled 8 million cars in total, including mo re than 5 million cars in the North America market.
• Toyota was fined $16 million by the US governmen t for “did not alert the US government to its safety problems quickly enough” (Andrews, Simon, Tian,
Zhao, 2011)

Toyota’s action
• Halted sales and suspended production of its e ight models for a short period
• Akio Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota, officially apol ogized to customers 10 days after recall decisi on. • Repaired affected vehicles for free and made c ompensations. • Spent $2 billion (Sanchanta, 2010)

The voice
“We are not proud of recalls, but there is nothing wrong with recalls. Hiding anything would be the problem. We are dealing with problems more expediently.” – a senior executive of Toyota (Kageyama, 2012)

“They expanded too fast and lost control of their quality control, Toyota‘s great reputation was quality control This will have a bigger effect inside Toyota, More than a U.S. auto company, the Japanese style of selfmortification and shame will ensure this never happens again.“ - Consumer advocate Ralph
Nader (Stein, 2010)

My opinion
• Quality control should not only be executed inside th e company, but also to the suppliers and even distrib utions. • Sometimes rapid expansion would lead to the decrea se of the employee’s quality. So human resource man agement should be considered as important as quali ty control.
• Although Lean Production is a successful method em ployed by many companies around the world, it is stil l need to be improved dynamically.

Conclusion
It is undeniable that the Toyota Production Sys tem is a great success, since it helped Toyota b ecome the NO.1 in automobile industry. But th e rapid expansion and the sense of achieveme nt would make Toyota lose its quality control, t he most crucial part in automobile manufactur
ing.