Toyota Case Study
Total Quality Management
--- A case of Toyota
Mengtao Ji Yuting Xi Feng Huang Yudi Jiang
Background
Toyota Motor Corporation is a famous global automaker headquartered in Japan, which commonly known as Toyota (Liker, 2004). As a leader in the global car market, Toyota Motor is famous of manufacturing quality cars with low price. Toyota’s world-leading quality and the management system are remarkable. In 2003, the annual profit of Toyota was larger than the combined earnings of GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Also, Toyota’s market share increased 24% over 2002, so a number of analysts estimated that Toyota’s market share would pass GM in few years and become the largest automaker in the world (Liker, 2004).
Toyota’s success
Many reasons lead to the success of Toyota Motor. Some researchers stated the “Toyota Way” based on the Toyota Production System (TPS) and concluded 14 principles of the “Toyota Way” which are divided into four categories of Philosophy, Process, People/Partners, and Problem Solving (Liker, 2004). These four categories started from long-term thinking to short-term management. The 14 principles are based on some techniques and human motivations. The quality improvement methods are from lean production, such as just-in-time, kaizen, one-piece flow, jidoka, and heijunka. The superiorities of human motivation in Toyota can be classified to one the four principles – Philosophy, which contains leadership, teams, culture, and supplier relationships (Liker, 2004).
Toyota Recall
At the end of 2009 and start of 2010, Toyota faced a big issue which is that 6.5 million cars have been recalled in the U.S. because of the problems of gas pedals (“Toyota's quality lapse”, 2010). Many analysts started to research why the quality issues happened to the world-leading quality car maker. As a large vehicle manufacturer in the world, Toyota had to change the strategies and some
--- A case of Toyota
Mengtao Ji Yuting Xi Feng Huang Yudi Jiang
Background
Toyota Motor Corporation is a famous global automaker headquartered in Japan, which commonly known as Toyota (Liker, 2004). As a leader in the global car market, Toyota Motor is famous of manufacturing quality cars with low price. Toyota’s world-leading quality and the management system are remarkable. In 2003, the annual profit of Toyota was larger than the combined earnings of GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Also, Toyota’s market share increased 24% over 2002, so a number of analysts estimated that Toyota’s market share would pass GM in few years and become the largest automaker in the world (Liker, 2004).
Toyota’s success
Many reasons lead to the success of Toyota Motor. Some researchers stated the “Toyota Way” based on the Toyota Production System (TPS) and concluded 14 principles of the “Toyota Way” which are divided into four categories of Philosophy, Process, People/Partners, and Problem Solving (Liker, 2004). These four categories started from long-term thinking to short-term management. The 14 principles are based on some techniques and human motivations. The quality improvement methods are from lean production, such as just-in-time, kaizen, one-piece flow, jidoka, and heijunka. The superiorities of human motivation in Toyota can be classified to one the four principles – Philosophy, which contains leadership, teams, culture, and supplier relationships (Liker, 2004).
Toyota Recall
At the end of 2009 and start of 2010, Toyota faced a big issue which is that 6.5 million cars have been recalled in the U.S. because of the problems of gas pedals (“Toyota's quality lapse”, 2010). Many analysts started to research why the quality issues happened to the world-leading quality car maker. As a large vehicle manufacturer in the world, Toyota had to change the strategies and some