...Business Policy Case Study: Toyota Submitted to: Dr. L. Geng Submitted by: R. Stewart, M. Ferguson, S. Ogbonna Date: Nov 26/14 History * The original idea behind the founding of Toyota Motor Company was conceived by Toyoda Sakichi. * His father Sakichi was an entrepreneur and investor whose primary was in textile industry. He was fascinated by the automotive industry after a brief visit to the United States in 1910. His invention in the textile industry led to the ability to lower the costs of weaving high-quality cloth. * He sold his patent rights of the Toyoda automotive loom for 1 million yuan an invested it on is son Toyoda Kiichiro whom he urged to look into the production of Automobiles in Japan. * His son Toyoda met a lot of stiff resistance from the board of Toyoda Automatic loom because the felt the market was dominated with semi knock down cars from Ford and General Motors and deemed it a risk as they felt they could not compete. But a deathbed wish make by his father, propelled Toyoda to forge ahead. Finally in 1933 he was given permission to set up an automobile department with Toyoda Automatic loom. Development * The original idea behind the founding of Toyota Motor Company was conceived by Toyoda Sakichi. * His father Sakichi was an entrepreneur and investor whose primary was in textile industry. He was fascinated by the automotive industry after a brief visit to the United States in 1910. His invention in the textile industry led...
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...CASE ANALYSIS CRISIS MANAGEMENT AT TOYOTA CASELET Toyota Motors Corporation, one of the largest automakers in the world. In January 2010, Toyota was forced to recall millions of cars after problems with braking, floor mats and acceleration pedals in its vehicles. The recalls even led Toyota to halt sales and production of eight of its most popular models. Due to growing number of recalls, sales plummeted thereby affecting the company's position in the global automotive industry. Analysts began to question Toyota's legendary quality and felt that the recalls represented a major failure on part of the company. After the recalls, Toyota went into crisis management mode and announced a fix for the accelerator problem. Various crisis management initiatives undertaken by the company to regain the trust of customers and restore its image as a quality automaker. As part of its crisis management process, Toyota placed ads in print and television media, involved executives and used social media platforms to address its customers. However, some analysts felt that the crisis communication team of Toyota was weak which led to a delay in identifying and addressing the situation. Crisis management experts were of the view that the image of Toyota would depend on how quickly it can fix the problems and how well it communicates with its customers. ISSUES: 1. Understand the importance of crisis management and various issues and challenges related to it. 2. Analyze whether Toyota's...
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...The crisis situation with Toyota started when leaders made a huge mistake and ignored the warning stage where no serious actions were initiated by management to take the appropriate steps. “The committee represented just one of three Congressional panels investigating the 2009-2010 recall of Toyota vehicles related to problems of sudden acceleration and the company’s delay in responding to the crisis” (Greto, Schotter, & Teagarden, 2010). This has led to the major recall started in late 2007 leading to many deaths by early 2010. Denial of malfunctions and mismanagement has led to this crisis that put Toyota’s brand in a chronic stage. In the case of Toyota, even though media brought high crises alert to the consumer, “Corporate leaders failed to be transparent and Toyota's corporate leadership team failed to effectively deal with the acute crisis stage and dissipate the enormous negative results that this stage brought into focus” (Heller, V. & Darling, J. (2011). Based on the strategic, structural, and cultural challenges, there are many apparent causes of Toyota's accelerator recall crisis. First, Toyota was desperate to drive growth globally; therefore, the key driver to such potential growth is to lower prices. “The nonfamily management was determined to accelerate Toyota’s growth with an aggressive globalization strategy” (Greto et al, 2010). Toyota’s cutting cost was the cause of installing poor quality parts and products. Secondly, in order to manufacture cheaper...
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...Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Illustrations ........................................................................................................ II List of Abbreviatons ........................................................................................................ III 1 Strategic Management Tools & Processes ............................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Question 1 ..................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Question 2 ..................................................................................................... 8 1.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 11 2 Innovation Management .......................................................................................... 12 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 12 2.2 Question 1 ................................................................................................... 13 2.3 Question 2 ................................................................................................... 15 2.4 Question 3 ..................
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...Toyota Motor Corporation Integrative Case Analysis Prepared by: Wenru Dai May 30, 2014 Professor Anna. Phillips Management 405 Table of Contents Cover/Title Page……………………………………………………………….1 Table of Contents…………...………………………………………………....2 Executive Summary.………...……………………………………..………….3 Organizational Overview……………………………………………………..4 Global Alliances and Strategy……………………..………………………….6 Organizational Strategy………………………………………………………….….9 Political/Culture………………………………………………………………...…...13 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..…16 Work Cited……………………………………………………………………..……17 Executive Summary: Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the biggest motor companies in the world, although it started as a Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. From a small company to a worldwide cooperation, I believe there are a lot of thing I can learn. That’s why I choose Toyota Motor Corporation as my case. Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In 2013 the multinational corporation consisted of 333,498 employees worldwide and, as of January 2014, is the fourteenth-largest company in the world by revenue (Overview). The company operates both automotive, under the brand Toyota, Lexus, Hino and Daihatsu, and non-automotive. According to Japan Corporate News network, in 2007, the firm sold over 8.5 million vehicles in more than 170 countries. Toyota aims at localization and collaborates with automobile companies in foreign countries in...
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...Case #5 (Optional) Bohuan Yu Toyota Motor Manufacturing Co. 1. As Doug Friesen, what would you do to address the seat problem? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts? If I was Doug I would look at when the seat problem began. When Toyota introduced the new wagon model along with eight other seat variations compared to the original five. Also, volume increased significantly as demand did. Now the plant was producing for the world market, Europe and Japan/Middle East added a combined total of 28 variations alone 2. What options exist? What would you recommend? Why? Toyota has several options when looking at resolving this problem. To address this problem I would look to see if these many variations are feasible for a company like KFS to handle. Expanding from simple variations to significantly more can be problematic for any company. Also, with the supplier not being in-house problems cannot be fixed on spot, causing delays. Thought KFS is close in proximity for such an expensive component as seats, it may be worth looking into making them at the Toyota plant itself. This is not a quick solution to fixing the seating problem, and Toyota may not find it cost or time effective to look at that option. At the Toyota plant in Kentucky they have been having problems with a plastic hook that the rear seats pop into. This hook has been breaking frequently causing issues. The cost to modify the tool would cost the supplier KFS $50,000. This problem...
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...Toyota is a well-known brand, especially to me because I have a Toyota Camry that I love. I wanted to learn more about the green marketing strategy, and I decided to focus mostly on the Prius marketing strategies, as it is a “green” vehicle and becoming very popular. The Toyota Prius provides a concrete case study of this truth. While the biggest product differentiation of the Prius is a fuel efficient, hybrid engine, most people do not buy it because it is eco-friendly. We assert that Toyota succeeded by marketing the Prius on multiple factors including the potential for gas savings, appeal to those who desire the latest technology, crossing into multiple market segments, and keeping the car practical, attractive, and functional. If they had appealed solely on impact to the environment, they would have failed to generate significant market penetration. Toyota did not set out to create a hybrid car. Rather, the Chairman Eiji Toyoda was concerned about the increasing popularity of larger cars and of the effect it would have on pollution levels in increasingly congested cities. He was concerned about the threat of peak oil looming and believed that the traditional internal combustion engine would not successfully carry Toyota into the next century. It was a year into that effort that Toyota decided to adapt a hybrid approach to creating a car with a lower impact on the environment. Toyota was cautious in entering the American market (Itazaki, 1999). Toyota's first step was...
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...discuss the drivers of Toyota’s accelerator crisis. Why was Toyota facing a recall crisis? Toyota was facing the accelerator recall crisis because the company and its management became more focused on growth and less concerned with the TPS principles the company had adhered to for much of its existence. Lean operations with a focus on the bottom line and a very lackadaisical support system in North American oversight as well as deficient TPS training proved to be a cultural disadvantage to a highly centralized Toyota management team (Gretto, Schotter & Teagarden, 2010). How well are Toyota’s management, employees and external stakeholders able to support their corporate brand? There was a clear breakdown between Toyota’s management, employees and external stakeholders. Because Toyota’s management was centralized in Japan and the U.S. operations worked in isolation from an information sharing standpoint, it was impossible for all interested parties to effectively collaborate and quickly solve the accelerator issue. There was a difficulty in training and process collaboration, especially in regards to TPS, which the American subsidiaries lacked any expertise or field knowledge in (Gretto, Schotter & Teagarden, 2010). Has Toyota effectively managed ethics and public relations in the United States? Who should be accountable for this activity? How could Toyota’s crisis management be improved? Toyota was deficient in managing ethics as well as handling public relations...
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...Internationalization at Toyota: A Case Study Examining the internationalization of the Toyota Motor Corporation, this essay argues that the firm’s strategy of localism, pertaining to both design and production, has lain at the core of the firm’s international successes. In this regard, it notes that Toyota learned from early failures, pertaining to export vehicles, and adjusted its strategy in longitude so as to make the most of export opportunities across the international economy. Noting that the pooling of research & development (R&D) resources which exists in Japan is highly relevant to success in this regard, the essay proposes that Toyota’s all-encompassing strategy of localism is responsible for its international success. Concluding, the essay does note that two areas of weakness, pertaining to quality control and emergent market penetration, still plague Toyota’s internationalization ventures. Thus, while the firm is highly successful in this regard, potent internal difficulties problematize its continued success. Toyota’s First Attempts at Internationalization To begin, understanding Toyota’s significant contemporary global posture requires an understanding of the firm’s humble roots. Indeed, in the pre-World War II era, Toyota was a very small automobile manufacturing firm with middling success in the country’s domestic market. Indeed, it is only through the American War Department’s industrial training program that Toyota ultimately succeeded, in the...
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...Harvard Business School 9-693-019 Rev. September 5, 1995 Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc. On the Friday before the running of the 118th Kentucky Derby, Doug Friesen, manager of assembly for Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, Plant, was approaching the final assembly lines, where shiny Camrys took shape. He heard a cheer go up. Team members on the lines were waving their hand tools towards a signboard that read “no overtime for the shift.” Smiling broadly, Friesen agreed: everyone in the plant surely deserved a relaxed Derby weekend. The plant had been hectic lately, as it was both supplying brisk sales of the all-new Camry sedan and ramping up station wagon versions for the European as well as North American markets. Overtime also had been necessary early in the week to make up lost production because the line utilization rate was below the projected target. In addition to these immediate problems, a growing number of cars were sitting off the line with defective seats or with no seats at all. The seat problem had been the subject of an urgent meeting called by Mike DaPrile, general manager of the assembly plant, that morning, May 1, 1992. At the meeting, Friesen learned of the situation firsthand from key people in both the plant and the seat supplier. He then spent the afternoon on the shop floor to learn more about the problem while the issues discussed were fresh in his mind. By the end of the day, it became clear to Friesen that the seat problem needed solving...
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...Toyota Motor Company, USA EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Toyota Motors Manufacturing (TMM) faces increasing problems with its seat supply. TMM’s single seat supplier, Kentucky Framed Seat (KFS), is responsible for the majority of the problems with material flaws and missing parts as the major encountered defects. These problems are increasingly occurring with an increase in varieties of and demand for the seats. Toyota currently addresses these problems offline; however, this is a deviation from the policies and procedures under the Toyota Production System (TPS). Now, as TMM ramps up for the production of the Camry Wagon, it must address the seat issue before seriously impacting production performance. We recommend the following major measures to overcome these problems: Immediate * Send TMM Quality Control (QC) people to KFS to identify and correct the source of the problem. * Place a QC person at the seat arrival dock to check for defects before sending seats to the line. * Continue fixing seat defects off line. It is too expensive to stop the line. * Assign employees to be responsible that correct replacement seats are procured in a timely manner. Long Term * Improve internal communication within Toyota, specifically between the Japanese design engineers and US manufacturing. * Decrease seat variety. * Implement TPS processes at the KFS factory. Fujio Cho pronounced this to be the next step for TMM. KFS is a logical first supplier to implement...
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...Toyota Case Operation Management Optional Case #1 Optional case 1 1. What would you do to address the seat problem? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts? We would focus on a series of actions: • We would first collect data on seats defect issue and try to find out what is the cause of the problem using the 5 Why's analysis. On the other hand we would ask KFS management to do the same thing. Then arrange a meeting with people involved in QM and come up and agree on a solution. TMM should investigate the issue of why are there differences in the 1st shift and 2nd shift at the rear seat installation (left as well as write hand side)? KFS should investigate what is wrong with rear seat: hook, lack of communication/synchronization between team KFS and TMM team. • In the effort of addressing the seat problem, we would also build a tiger team with the specific target to solve this issue in a determined period of time. The team should have just this issue to solve (a project based activity). Team members should be managers from TMM (mandatory Shirley Sargent, Da Prille, Lewis, Creemens) and with participation of KFS representative managers and somebody experienced from Tsutsumi. Taking into consideration that Tsutsumi didn't report so far any problem with the same engineering drawings, and also looking at their decrease in defects rate (from 7 occurrences per shift to one per shift by April), it looks that if they had a problem with the seats, they managed...
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...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, with a total of 2.49 million dollars...
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...Toyota Case Toyota Motor Corp. (TMC) Should the new Toyota president accelerate the launch scheduled for the Toyota Prius? The plan to introduce the car “at the end of 1998 with expected production of 1000 units per month…” (Reinhardt, Yao & Egawa, 2006) is an extremely aggressive and ambitious goal; but, is it in TMC’s best interest to speed up the planned launch? There is no doubt that the new president (Hiroshi Okuda) is under extreme pressure to compete in a global market, he believes the company should radically alter its image to attract new customers and gain a competitive advantage while systematically facilitating environmentally-socially responsible practices. It may very well be that TMC should push for a faster launch; but, there are a few things we must take into consideration before we encourage our Toyota team to make any hasty changes. The auto mobile industry faces many challenges (as most industries do) however; this industry is unique in its own way. The industries high barriers to entry, high capital cost, and unique manufacturing facilities make managerial mistakes extremely costly (complete failure is not easily corrected, much less when you change the economies of scale platform). Before making any drastic changes to the manufacturing process, TMC must first analyze its: competition, market, government regulations, facility capabilities, management practices and overall responsibilities (responsibilities include anything from: reaching Goals...
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...1.As Doug Friesen, what would you do to address the problem? Where would you focus your attention and solution efforts? The major problem that Doug Friesen, manager of assembly, needs to address is of Seat Problems. Due to seat problems, production level is decreasing and which resultant leads to increase in overtime works, lead-time and off-time vehicle inventory. The major problem that is observed is improper seat quality management in KSF. Most of the seat problems were occurring because of this mismanagement like, wrong, missing and broken parts, wrinkles and missing bolster. Also, KSF inspection of seats before shipping is not proper. There need to check the method followed by KFS while inspection of seats because several of defective seats are being send as fit. May be by providing more training to the worker this problem could be solved. Also, there was ineffective feedback system, due to which Doug was not able to reach the specific solution for the seat problems. So, by properly sharing and discussing all the feedbacks may gave best optimum solution to the problem. 2. What options exist? What would you recommend? Why? The options for the seat problem are: - 1.Fixing of bolts and hooks in a proper manner – As the members of the teams were trying to fix the bolt in the front seats they tend to shot the bolt at a wrong angle because of which cross threading happens...
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