Page 219 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

PURPOSE FOR IMPROVING
SAFETY—CUSTOMER
TOYOTA CHANGES RESPONSIVENESS
Reduced engineering contractors Contractors not as trained and
indoctrinated into Toyota culture
COMMUNICATIONS
Executive positions to integrate Improve communication and
sales, engineering , and decision making (“One Toyota”)
manufacturing
Appointment of regional CQOs, Communicate effectively across
global quality task force formed, regions to share safety issues
and global database created
North American quality task Better communication and
force (weekly conference call) decisions
Customer data from multiple Decisions made at the
sources integrated and directed source; eliminate centralized
to responsible engineers bottleneck
U.S. TOYOTA MOTOR SALES
Two-year free scheduled More data on customer issues/
maintenance concerns
Increased use of Internet (e.g., Better communicate directly
Facebook) with customers

Did It Work?

It’s impossible to assess any crisis response program without evalu-
ating the impact: Did the company survive the crisis? Did Toyota
manage to turn the crisis into opportunity? Of course, that’s a
long-term question that can’t fully be answered just a year after the
crisis hit its peak. But there are data available that point to Toyo-
ta’s recovery from the crisis being remarkable, especially consid-
ering the short time frame. We’ve summarized that evidence in a

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