Page 204 - Toyota Under Fire

RESPONSE AND THE ROAD TO RECOVER Y

tomer. Shinichi Sasaki, executive vice president of global quality,
explains:

As you know, Toyota has made a lot of efforts to achieve
the classical definition of quality control . . . things like
dependability or the durability of the vehicles. But,
if there’s a [lesson] from the recent recalls, it’s that the
things we engineers do not think are serious could
sometimes create a lot of concerns on the part of the cus-
tomers. . . . We should not just be talking to the custom-
ers from a purely engineering viewpoint, but we have to
care more about the customer’s feelings.

Takeshi Uchiyamada agreed: “When we finally got the op-
portunity to do a thorough root-cause analysis and ask ‘why’ five
times, there were two main items from the R&D standpoint.
The first item was that from the time that an issue happens in
the market to the time when the engineering department re-
sponds, it was taking too much time. The second item is about
listening to the customer. We have our own Toyota quality and
safety standards, which are sometimes more severe than other
companies’, and we intend to protect that standard of quality. . . .
But we did not always understand the customer’s view of the
product as well as we should have.”
Akio Toyoda puts it in a slightly different way: “One of the
lessons that we have learned is that safety and peace of mind are
two different things. I would say categorically Toyota’s vehicles
are safe, but we could have done better in terms of explaining
[everything about our vehicles] so that the people can feel peace
of mind.”

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