Recall Serye: Toyota to correct management flaws, improve oversight

Toyota, easily the world’s largest auto manufacturer group by sales, has had to deal with a rough road in the past few months. 

While sales are undeniably strong, they have had to answer a series of recalls involving various facets of their products, manufacturing, certification, quality control, management, and the like. This recall “serye” is still ongoing, but Toyota is starting to move forward to take steps to correct the issues.

After undergoing the corporate automaker equivalent of soul searching, Toyota Motor Corporation has submitted a report to the Japanese agency responsible for land transport: the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism or MLIT.

Toyota says that their management’s involvement in many of the processes -particularly with certification, development, and quality control- was not adequate. Upon reading and digesting the statement, Toyota will revamp their organization by implementing a general corrective measure to enhance management oversight and outline responsibilities for planning, certification, production, decision making and the like. In other words, they will improve their internal processes with more management and oversight to prevent further problems down the line.

While the statement does sound very bureaucratic, we have to remember that Toyota is a very large organization, and they run on processes that have to be clearly laid out in order to function properly. As to whether the recalls and issues will stop emerging in the short term, probably not. Any changes they make will likely be felt much later on, though we expect a few more issues to emerge as they go through their internal audits and re-checks of their vehicles, certification paperwork, and the like.

Below is an excerpt of the statement:

Toyota will make company-wide efforts to prevent recurrence based on the points provided by the MLIT at the time of the corrective order. 

With the suggestions by the MLIT, Toyota has recognized that management was not sufficiently involved in the certification operations, and that there were many areas for improvement in the foundation of its certification operations, such as the data management system and the establishment of clearer rules and procedures. 

Toyota will review the mechanisms and systems designed to implement proper certification operations, notice something abnormal, and take action promptly through the joint effort between the management and those on-site.

In the medium to long term, through the Toyota Production System (TPS), we will clarify the workflow from planning, development to certification, incorporate Toyota's kaizen into certification operations, and foster common values and improvements across the Toyota Group.

The progress of improvement will be reported to the MLIT on a quarterly basis.