Page 193 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

We dwell on this point simply because understanding how
Toyota turned the recall crisis into an opportunity to strengthen
the company for the future and move it closer to True North re-
quires an understanding of what the real problems underlying the
crisis were and what they were not. First, none of the recalls had
anything to do with errors made in Toyota factories—so respond-
ing by revamping TPS and the plants would not solve the prob-
lem. Second, they were not fundamental engineering or testing
problems—meaning that there was not a specific flaw in the
core technical process of engineering and validating vehicles that
caused all of the defects that led to recalls. Third, the company’s
commitment to safety and quality did not slip—it did not sud-
denly become “safety deaf,” as Ray LaHood asserted.
But it’s not entirely inaccurate to say that the company be-
came deaf. It became deaf to real-world customer use, to cus-
tomer worries and concerns, to input from nonengineers, to the
overall political and media environment it was operating in, and,
in some very important cases, to internal communication. In
some instances, the organization became deaf to the people at the
gemba—a serious problem indeed for Toyota, since that is one of
the pillars of the company’s historic success.
A factual assessment of the symptoms that Toyota was ex-
periencing leads to the conclusion that the problems at Toyota
were related to communications, internal and external, and to
and from customers and other stakeholders, partially as a conse-
quence of a failure to achieve its goals of regional “self-reliance.”
The goal is not for each region to act as an island, but rather for
each to have the resources and leadership to manage its own day-
to-day affairs and a greater degree of influence over larger deci-
sions that cut across regions.

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