Page 212 - Toyota Under Fire

RESPONSE AND THE ROAD TO RECOVER Y

field issue, and decided whether or not this was an area
that had anything to do with engineering from a design
standpoint. If it did, they would request the engineering
design group to investigate. So, there were many people
that handled the issue before it got to engineering. And
there was also the possibility that an issue might be
dropped or not passed forward.

Immediate steps were taken to increase the engineering de-
partment’s access to raw data coming in, but that still left engineers
at arm’s length. Truly addressing the problem also required a new
dedication to the principle of genchi genbutsu among engineers.
There have been many changes to the engineering depart-
ment to bring the voice of the customer into the engineering
process. First, the R&D department in Japan reassigned 100 en-
gineers to a Design Quality Innovation Division with a focus on
“going and seeing,” adding to existing analysis from a human
factors engineering standpoint and feeding that information
into the design process more directly. The members of this team
specifically spend far more time in the field talking to custom-
ers and dealers. Trips by Japanese design and quality engineers
to visit dealers and customers increased fourfold in 2010. And
managing officers who are responsible for the engineering depart-
ment are also making at least two trips to dealers each year, to try
to understand issues.
Second, to ensure that the information gained from this new
attention to going and seeing in the field was incorporated into
the vehicle design process, the R&D department added four
weeks to the vehicle development schedule immediately after the
production prototype is complete. Spreading four weeks over
the life of the program might have had little impact, but these

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