Page 141 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Using Toyota’s other pedal assembly supplier, Denso, was also
not an option because the parts weren’t exact analogues; in gen-
eral, you can’t put a Denso pedal in a car designed to use a CTS
pedal. A fix for the existing pedals had to be found.
Work was going on furiously in the postproduction en-
gineering teams in Japan as they tested various possible fixes
in collaboration with CTS. In North America, the purchasing
department at Toyota Engineering and Manufacturing North
America (TEMA) was making phone calls to auto parts suppli-
ers and contract manufacturers around the world to find factories
that had the capacity to produce the proposed remedies.
By January 28, after round-the-clock testing, a fix for the
sticky pedals had been chosen. A small rectangular piece of steel,
referred to as a reinforcement bar, was inserted to increase the
clearance between the internal mechanisms in the accelerator
pedal assembly. This increased clearance would reduce the fric-
tion caused by wear and environmental conditions and allow the
pedal to operate smoothly for the life of the vehicle. But now mil-
lions of these exactly sized steel parts (sized somewhat differently
for different vehicles) had to be produced as quickly as possible.
Even for a relatively simple piece of steel, that’s a tall order. The
manufacturer had to have the right machines and the spare ca-
pacity to start mass producing the reinforcement bars right away.
None of Toyota’s major suppliers could do it in the time frame
required.
Grand Rapids Spring in Michigan came to the rescue. As
luck would have it, the company had a facility with just the right
tools that was operating below capacity. Still, starting to produce
the parts in volume right away was a mammoth effort. The pro-
duction line was set up on February 3, and production started
24 hours a day immediately. By the end of the weekend, more

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