Toyota Motor Corporation is a worldwide company that specializes in automobiles, which are manufactured around the world. Toyota’s mission “has been to contribute to society by producing high quality products and services, while reducing the environmental impact of our operations (Investor Fact Sheet, 2013).” The North American Region will be the segment that is concentrated on in this individual learning project. Toyota Motor Corporation was first introduced to the United States in 1957. Within this same year on “August 25th, 1957, two Toyopet Crowns were imported to the United States” and on “October 31st, 1957, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc is established (Timeline, 2013).” The North American region began manufacturing vehicles in 1986. Toyota developed this region because “Toyota is committed to building vehicles where they are sold (Investor Fact Sheet, 2013).” With that said, the North American region has shown tremendous growth with 14 manufacturing plants and over 20 million vehicles manufactured. The total sales of products for the North American region in 2010 were $190,507 million (Investor Fact Sheet, 2013). As a result of these achievements, the North American region has become one of the top sales by region following Japan.…
I. Executive Summary Toyota Motor Corporation is leading the way to future mobility through innovation, productivity, quality and efficiency. Toyota uses a self-developed strategy known as the Toyota Production System (TPS) to guide business process improvements. TPS has been utilized by a variety of industries all over the world, though many organizations tailor system components to their needs rather than embracing TPS as a total management system. The advantages of TPS are savings in time, space and resources resulting in increased efficiency and revenue, however, TPS limits organic production capacity by narrowing supplier relationships and inventory. A grid analysis is used to compare Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) and USA locations for the Lexus RX 330/350 North American plant. Nine weighted factors are used to compare plant sites. These factors relate to government control, taxes, brand recognition, infrastructure and more. The three critical factors are distance to market, distance to suppliers and government regulation. Grid analysis results favor the TMMC site over USA by a…
This report includes a critical assessment of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which will be used to demonstrate the basic understanding of the TPS and describe the TPS as a total entity. This report also includes a grid analysis which will be used to help make the North American plant location decision for the Lexus RX 330 Line by listing the key factors as either exogenous or endogenous, stating any relevant assumptions or constraints, and assigning two scores to each factor: one for production of the Lexus RX 330 at the Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Canada (TMMC), and one for production at a Toyota factory in the USA. Lastly, this report will recommend an appropriate production capacity to be built at TMMC, and it will assess Toyota’s current regional production strategy in North America.…
New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), a Toyota – General Motors joint venture, took place in 1984. Generally, both companies had tangible objectives, on one hand, GM’s targets were reopening Fremont plant and learning how to produce a small, profitable car; on the other hands, Toyota’s aim was with GM’s help to launch a production line in the United States. However, the main strategy of the joint venture was learning. And ultimately, NUMMI became a desirable chance for GM to learn Toyota’s Production System (TPS) and for Toyota – an opportunity to…
There are many big transnational corporations and Toyota Motor Corporation is one of them. They produce a full range of model offerings from mini vehicles to large trucks. In 1957 when the first prototypes of the crowns were exported to the United States Toyota had expanded the sales of the automobile across the entire globe. For more than fifty years Toyota vehicles have been sold in more than 170 countries and regions in throughout the world. They continue to develop their exports, and the localization of their bases. Their policy is “producing vehicles where the demand exists.” They have 51 bases in 26 different countries and regions. There is…
Offshore is a business strategy to hire foreign labor and produce in other countries. Toyota has benefited from this strategy a lot since it began to use in 1957. In 2009, the vehicles produced by overseas companies brought Toyota approximately 9000 billion yens profits (Toyota-global, 2011). However, due to poor the quality of oil pedals and brakes made by a US company CTS, the Toyota mass recall crisis happened in 2010, which cost the company up to 2 billion USD for compensation(JR.Healey,2010). This typical example manifested some serious weaknesses of the offshore production. Toyota is currently in a dilemma about whether to continue using this strategy or not. This report will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of offshore production from Toyota’s perspective.…
Toyota has been the number automaker in the world since 2008 according to Forbes. But recently it has lost its rank due to massive recalls. It’s evident that cost-cutting and lack of control plays a big role on why Toyota vehicles are failing at the rate they are going. Even (the former) CEO of Toyota Mr. Wantanbe noticed a lack of control within the organization; He stated “In each division, function, or region, we still have numerous problems to cope with. We need to identify each one of those tasks or problems and fully recognize them and pursue the causes” (Rowley, 2005).…
* 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.…
On August 8th, 2009, Chris Lastrella frantically dialed 911. “We’re in a Lexus...and we’re going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck...we’re in trouble...there’s no brakes...we’re approaching the intersection...hold on...hold on and pray...pray.” (Frean and Lea, 2010). These were the last words heard before the family of four were sent to an early grave. This was also the beginning of what would become Toyota Motor Corporation’s biggest recall to date. Toyota was and is known for it's quality above other automobile manufacturers. The main ingredient in Toyota's Production System (TPS) is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). The goal of TPM is to eliminate product defects and other problems before they occur. With this type of structure, how did a company known for its' excellence in quality, suffer one of the worse recall crises in recent…
Cameron, Kim S. and Quinn, Robert E. (1999) Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture. New York:…
This report is about Toyota and how they had to scale back on production. Toyota is one of the world leading automakers. The economy is on a spiraling downfall and it is causing a lot of big name companies to cut back whether it is limiting employee hours or firing employees. Another factor that goes into play is over-production and over-paid workers. Therefore, Toyota was forced to make some changes with their North American plants to cope with what they called “the worst automotive slump in decades.”…
New start for Post – merger Toyota and first full scale production…
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,…
Upon research for the Toyota Motor Company you will find that they are the largest automaker in the world followed by General Motors. Recently Toyota had made a very bold move on their planning side to be able to stay the largest automaker in the world. On March 6th 2013 the company appointed non-Japanese Executive to lead three out of its four global regions. It also appointed three outside members to its board of directors, including longtime former General Motors executive Mark Hogan (Snavely, 2013). This is the strategic and also tactical form of planning the short term being able to make the vehicles more intriguing along with making sure that Toyota stays in the eyes of the American consumers. Foreign auto makers tend to do this no matter where they come from because no matter what their mother-ship is in a different country not realizing what the true difference in design and passion is. Planning for growth such as theirs with long term customer retention is not always easily to be done with the poor quality from large and important recalls here in the United States.…
Overcapacity Economic downturn Shifting consumer demands European trade barrier reductions Company History • Established in 1937 out of Sakichi Toyoda’s weaving machine company • Launched first car (SA Model) in 1947 • “Toyota Production System” formed in 1950 based on Just-In-Time principle • First global expansion in 1959 at Brazil • In 1972, cumulative production >10M units Production History UNITS (thousands) Domestic Production Total Production 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1935 1936 1937 1940 1957 1960 1972 1980 1982 1988 1996 1999 Business segments • Automotive – Design, manufacture and sales of passenger cars, recreational vehicles, SUVs and related parts • Financial services – Provisions of loans to car buyers and car dealers • Others – Industrial vehicles (forklifts, etc.)…