Research Topics: Toyota International Marketing Management

Toyota International Marketing Management

Introduction             The spotlight is now on Toyota because of the recent recalls that has plagued the company and its customers. The failure of Toyota’s production system and supply chain is now a worldwide issue, causing a ripple effect of negative publicities and threats from various pressure groups. The company’s top executives have been called to be questioned by the American Congress. The company’s supply chain, a model, which many companies around the world emulate, is now in question.  The company’s president and CEO, Akio Toyoda, acknowledged that in its pursuit of growth, Toyota, stretched its lean philosophy close to breaking point and in so doing became confused about some of the principles that first made it great: its focus on putting customer satisfaction above all else, and its ability to stop, think and make improvements. Aims and Objectives             The aim of this paper is to investigate on the recent controversies that Toyota faces. Specifically this paper aims: 1. To determine the manufacturing principles and models employed by Toyota. 2. To examine the causes and effects of the current controversies that Toyota is facing. 3. To examine Toyota Production System (TPS) 3. To determine the impact of Toyota’s manufacturing and supply chain failures to the car manufacturing industry. 4. To examine the company’s supply chain system and its strengths and weaknesses. 5. To offer recommendations for the company.   Background             Reported accidents, deaths and driver concerns have shaken the car manufacturing industry. The object of these incidents is Toyota, one of the most successful car manufacturers in the world. Among the various complaints about the company’s cars are dangerous floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals. In the United States, Toyota’s vehicle faults are allegedly linked to the deaths of 50 people, and have forced a recall of 11 million vehicles worldwide. Akio Toyoda, the company’s president and founder’s grandson, has been called to Washington DC to stand in front of the American Congress to account for his company’s failure to act quickly and seriously enough to protect the safety of its customers in the face of the mounting evidence of defects and fatalities. Akio Toyoda has acknowledged that the cause of these problems may have been the company’s eagerness to expand globally which caused the company to lost sight of a long-established commitment to the spirit of customer first.             Toyota has grown from being a small Japanese carmaker in the 1960s to the biggest carmaker in 2007, outranking General Motors. The founding principles for this success were embodies by the “Toyota Way” – a respect for learning, truth, trust, team-work, challenge and continuous improvement. It gave birth in the 70s and 80s to the Toyota Production System (TPS), now imitated across manufacturing industry, better known as Lean Manufacturing. TPS or Lean is held up as the archetypal manufacturing system of modern times. It is a methodology based on the ideals of just-in-time, continuous improvement etc.    Definition of Concepts Toyota Production System (TPS) – The history of just-in-time and other Japanese manufacturing innovations can be traced to the Toyota Production System developed by Taiichi Ohno. There are two pillars of Toyota Production System. These are just-in-time and auto-activation (jidoka). The Toyota Production System lay in the simultaneous implementation of these two pillars, on condition that jidoka precedes just-in-time, the former being an indispensable precondition for the implementation of the latter. Jidoka (Auto-Activation) – aims to delegate responsibility to the workers for the quality of products form the elementary production tasks themselves. In practice this innovation means that line workers not only have the right, but are obliged to take the time which is necessary in order to carry out the tasks necessary to ensure the maintenance of the highest quality standards at each stage of production, even while production is taking place. Just-In-Time – is a method of production programming involves a series of innovation in the production and the preparation of the work more generally in the logistics of production and in the management of the flows and stocks of intermediate and semi-finished goods. These innovations take together constitute a system of production with very reduced stocks, made possible a system of information processing unique and unprecedented in the history of work organization. Supply Chain Management – Supply chain or value chain management is composed of the operational or tactical activities and can be defined as ‘managing the entire chain of raw material supply, manufacture, assembly and distribution to the end consumer (Jones 1989 cited in Lowson 20002). Christopher (1998) defines supply chain management as the management of upstream and downstream relationships with the suppliers and customers to deliver superior consumers value at less cost to the supply chain as a whole. Lean Manufacturing – the goal of lean manufacturing is to create a manufacturing environment that is driven by demand and that holds only a small amount of inventory and product at any given time (Bacheldor 2004 cited in Ndahi 2006).  Lean production uses less of everything – half the human effort in the facroty, half the manufacturing space, half the investment in tools, half the engineering hours to develop a new product in half the times. Also, it requires keeping far less than half the inventory on site, and results in many fewer defects, and produces a greater and ever growing variety of products. Proponents of lean manufacturing believed that the system eliminates waste, reduces inventory, and increases value throughout the supply chain (Kumar and Yin 2004 cited in Ndahi 2006).   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Toyota International Marketing Management

Introduction The spotlight is now on Toyota because of the recent recalls that has plagued the company and its custom...