Page 240 - Toyota Under Fire

LESSONS

every rock and every stone, lift it up and see what’s under there.
You’ve got to look for yourself and make your own judgment.
Don’t just take our word.’ That’s the essence of genchi genbutsu.”
Steve followed their advice and developed his own confidence in
the electronics systems:

From March through August of 2010, I traveled to Ja-
pan almost every other week. I’ve been to every engi-
neering area. I’ve been to the place where they check for
electromagnetic interference, that has magnets as big as
a room, where they’re trying to make the system fail so
they can find a weak point to fix it. I visited where they
do the crash tests. I’ve talked to engineers. I’ve talked to
technicians. I talked to people in production. I have vis-
ited many dealerships in North America, and they never
have found a case of electronic problems causing SUA.
And then I spent some time at Exponent. I got there
early in the morning and left there about 10:30 at night,
and was totally amazed at the amount of problem
solving and how they do their problem solving.

The recall crisis revealed that Toyota had missed the mark in
its commitment to genchi genbutsu, but that renewed commit-
ment also allowed for rapid action when the shortcomings were
revealed.

Kaizen Mind
The role of kaizen mind in Toyota’s response to the Great Re-
cession and the recall crisis is fairly obvious. At no point did the
company panic and start making changes without a thorough
analysis of the problems and a search for solutions that would

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