Page 18 - Toyota Under Fire

PREF ACE

remarkably resilient to any number of challenges and crises, from
recessions to dramatic increases in the strength of the yen (which
slashes profits) to the 1973 oil crisis to major spikes in the costs of
raw materials such as steel. The company was a model of resilience, a
company that could defy business cycles and maintain a steady path
of growth and progress while other companies made knee-jerk deci-
sions to retreat from investment, close plants, and lay off masses of
employees. But the recession plus the recall crisis was a greater chal-
lenge by an order of magnitude than anything I had seen Toyota face.
At that point, Tim and I began talking about writing a book
that ultimately became Toyota under Fire. We read everything we
could find about what was happening and had happened at Toy-
ota. It was certainly important to ground our analysis in the facts
and to separate fact from fiction on the most fundamental issues,
particularly for the recall crisis. I called friends and contacts in-
side and outside the company. Toyota itself granted us unique
access to its executives, managers, and team members so that we
could go and see and draw our own conclusions. We began do-
ing our best to find out what lessons Toyota was learning and
what lessons others could learn from Toyota’s experience manag-
ing through these crises.
Our instincts that there were important lessons to be learned
were borne out as Toyota began to recover from the negative fire-
storm. Market share, recognition for quality, and profitability be-
gan recovering quickly. More and more data came out suggesting
that many of the accusations against Toyota had little basis in
fact. Various media reports were shown to be inaccurate; sup-
posedly independent experts who were criticizing Toyota were
revealed to be on the payroll of trial attorneys who were suing
Toyota. While the company had not fully recovered from ei-
ther the Great Recession or the recall crisis, it had bounced back

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