Page 216 - Toyota Under Fire

RESPONSE AND THE ROAD TO RECOVER Y

ufacturing department got into the act, although none of the re-
calls in 2009 and 2010 were the result of a defect introduced in
the manufacturing plants. Art Niimi, who is responsible for global
manufacturing and the North American region at the board level,
and is a former president of TEMA, shared his perspective that
manufacturing has to take ownership of quality issues too:

We had internal discussions and tried to find out what
we can do, what we could offer as a production side.
And we decided eventually that in manufacturing we
will take the responsibility for quality of the vehicles
coming out of the plant. It is the plant that ships the
product and delivers the product to the customers. So
we say that each plant will take responsibility for the
shipment quality.

Each manufacturing plant was charged with reexamining
all of its quality procedures, going job by job down to the de-
tail of every step the worker does and the possible quality prob-
lems that can occur in that step. Data from the field on defects
in any component began coming back to the plant at a higher
rate than ever, including, whenever possible, delivering the actual
part that failed. Then the problems are analyzed using Toyota’s
problem-solving method, and countermeasures are defined and
implemented. If the countermeasure involves a product change
by Engineering, the plant will take responsibility for ushering
the change through Engineering. Every work group of about 20
team members has key performance indicators for quality posted
next to its work place, and that includes live data coming in on
customer concerns. Daily meetings are held to work on quality,
and many quality circles have taken on larger projects related to

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