In order for a leadership to be instrumental in making of certain important decisions the act of balancing lean production with the need for redundancy is a difficult act as well as ability to lead and managing the change. The ground roots of Toyota’s culture are less challenged and people do question whether or not their admiration of Toyota’s path toward excellence was misplaced. Only recently did the public criticism have focused on complaints which mostly deal with computerization, issues regarding with global trends and the effects of the company to become the world’s largest automaker. In fact, the latest criticism of Toyota in these three areas only displays the fact that need of strong leadership holds the keys to success and failure, to drastic organizational transformation. The decisions on strategic positioning impact its cooperation with suppliers. The suppliers’ original alignment of competitive advantages, core capacities and value propositions needs to change along with that of Toyota’s. Such changes, unavoidably, will be reflected in vehicle quality, customer satisfaction, and even customer safety.
It is interesting to note few points as to the path chosen to grow the current needs of the company. Some of them are common product platforms, various multiple models, faster facelifts, relaying on new technology and emphasis on innovation. All these initiatives built pressure on Toyota’s Lean Production culture – “waste reduction, process stability, being more like a tortoise than the hare”.
In the dictionary of this massive company there is no word called “problem”; rather one can only find phrase like “opportunities for improvement.” Hopefully, the recall of 2 million car crisis will be treated once more as a chance to align its lean production culture and its excellent operation capability with its craving to influence new technology; to proceed sourcing from all the corners of the world while continuing to stay on the top most position. Business Week estimates that Toyota is losing $155 million per week as a result of their recent recall and in the weeks leading up to this article Toyota had lost nearly $30 billion in stock valuation. The long-term impacts of the root causes that led to Toyota’s current situation could cost the company hundreds of billions of dollars.
A transformation already is apparent and going strong in the making of it. The times have changed and Toyota has become less defensive and has responded quickly to new complaints of defects. Leadership is no longer absent and now appears to be leading from the front.
Some recommendations where we would like to be heard of are mentioned below:
- To develop widespread change communications, made to discrete the end user groups.
- To tailor training and mark the various support strategy for each particular department.
- Conduct a thorough training needs analysis.
- Manage training logistics.
- A technique to co-ordinate ‘Road show’ presentations demonstrating the need to do things and deliver on time to as many people as possible would create awareness.
It is easy to blame out the mistakes to others but Toyota’s problems are not the result of a single individual making an isolated mistake, it is rather due to a companywide series of mistakes that are all related to each other. Heaps of corporate functions were involved which included government ties, customer service, government relations, vendor management and public relations, that one cannot help but trait the crash of Toyota to systemic management failure.
An important criterion that others should learn from Toyota’s mistakes is that Human Resource needs to periodically test or audit each of the processes that could allow this type of billion-dollar error to occur.