Case Study Of Toyota Motor Corporation ( Or Toyota )

Operations management is the planning, organising and controlling all sectors of the operations process to potentially meet customer demands and expectations while also using resources efficiently. Globalisation is the removal of trade barriers between nations resulting into one single economic market. This is both detrimental and progressive to a business as it brings significant impact on operations strategies. This can be seen through the case studies of the largest Australian airline, Qantas and leading global manufacturer and seller of sportswear and accessories, Nike.

Toyota is one the most storied companies in the world today, an aspect that has led to it drawing the attention of researchers, journalists and executives who are seeking to benchmark its production system that is extremely famous across the world. This is influenced by the company’s ability to outperform its competitors in terms of cost reduction, reliability, quality and market capitalization. This was exhibited by the company’s ability to replace Daimler Chyrsler as the third largest car company in North America in 2005 in terms of both sales and production.

It is important that Toyota improve their communication and process of evaluating their parts because if they don’t they risk losing customers and market shares. An improved process would also give them reassures that this issue does not arise again. According to Porter (1996) “Delivering greater value allows a company to charge a higher average unit price; greater efficiency result in lower average unit cost” (p.62). Toyota needs to focus more on quality than quantity. After quality is critiqued then they can continue to grow at a lower rate. If Toyota gives their North American companies power to make decisions than it would be a huge improvement to the companies and less risk of safety issues.

Toyota faced a challenge related to the poor visibility and low quality of a supplier for the Suprima model. The Japanese brand, being related to a top quality product and a Just in Time manufacturing scheme could not afford to have stock out problems nor not meeting consumers’ demand for quality.

Operations Management Process is the central arteries within the organization because it produces the planning process for goods and services, which are its reason for existent. Operations management is linked to all organizations as every organization is producing either a product or a service. However, it cannot be said to be the most important function since there are other functional areas and boundaries within an organization. In today's fast changing world, organizations have to have a tendency towards being efficient, effective and innovative to the changing environment to succeed. Operations Management has to use metrics in order for them to accomplish their task and be successful with

Yet, the public perceptions may be at odds with the objective measures. In Toyota’s case, there have been indications that the quality level of the company’s products had fallen off in a span of few years. There are changes that have taken place during a period when most of the company’s close competitors, such as Fords, were producing more cost-effective and efficient automobiles. In addition, the company’s unique production approach and the emphasis on continuous improvement and learning coupled with a matrix structure are key reasons for the company’s leadership in the cat manufacturing industry. Toyota’s Production Systems (TPS) was founded in the principles of “Just-in-time. This approach has less opportunity for slack resources and focuses of the benefits of efficiency on the part of employees and reduction on waste resources (Griffin and Gregory, 5). Further, Toyota Company enacts its production system with the assistance of its human resources strategies, culture, and organizational structure. Toyota’s Production System emphasizes on learning and modesty when it comes to assessing past success and differentiated them from

This paper describes various aspects of the Toyota recall issue. It enables to determine the Toyato recall issues, purpose and structure of it. The Toyota recall issue has prompted high criticism in national forums, automotive trade publications and media circles. Three separate recall issue by the Toyota occurred end of 2009 to start of the 2010. First, recall issue was to correct a possible incursion of an incorrect drivers side floor mat into the foot pedal. Second recall issue start after some crashes were presented by floor mat incursion. Last recall issues was a separate recall for hybrid anti-lock brake software. Toyota declared recalls of around 5.2 million vehicles for the floor mat problem and 2.3 million vehicles for

Unfortunately, the recalls caused many economic issues for Toyota. Toyota decided it was best to suspend the production of eight models affected by the sticking accelerator pedal to ensure no more defective vehicles were sold (Ellis, 2010). The shutting down of manufacturing showed customers that Toyota is fully invested in fixing the issues no matter what the cost. In addition, the cost of suspending the production of vehicles was the cost to fix all defective parts. It is estimated that this recall cost Toyota two billion dollars and caused their shares to fall 2.3% (Popper and Hirsch, 2010). Toyota also now faced the challenge of earning back the title of the world’s largest automaker.

In the 1960's Toyota linked together quality, customer satisfaction, and profit. These became pillars for Toyota's foundation and the company's baseline for growth and expansion. In 2009, the company's recalls started with what was deemed a floor mat issue. “Over the next four months, the company recalled 3.4 million more vehicles in three separate recalls over and above the initial 3.8 million, for a total of more than 7 million” (Cole, 2011). The issues were linked to different things; Sticky gas pedals, more floor mat problems, software glitches, and electrical problems. But one fact remained, the percentage

sales of Chrysler automobiles in the same year, experienced huge setbacks in 2009 when the company found itself scrambling to protect its name brand image due to consumer complaints about “deadly defects in coolant pumps, brakes, accelerators and even floor mats” (Ross, 2010, p.1). This prompted the recall of over 10 million Toyota vehicles worldwide.

My knowledge of operations management's impact on organizational effectiveness has grown considerably in this course. I now have a better understanding of how the design and improvement of operational processes and systems can be structured so that the resources required for producing and delivering goods and services are optimized to their full potential. I have a newfound appreciation for the role of operations managers. They take on the challenge of improving productivity to grow and enhance the business an effort that spans all business units and divisions including purchasing, manufacturing, shipping, packaging, supply chain, human resources, marketing, finance, and information technology.

Toyota must keep on producing vehicles that car customers want to buy. They must figure out what these buyers demand in a car. Once they tackle this then they can be successful, but if they don’t produce what they buyers want then they will not reach their goals.

The purpose of this report is to examine if the reasoning behind well-known car manufacturer, Toyota’s loss of revenue and leading market position is alone as a result of extensive product recalls following a fatal crash of a Lexus ES 350 on August 28th 2009. The journal article, “Toyota Crisis: Management Issue?” (Yuanyuan Feng 2010) provides an outline of the key factors that triggered the 2009 Toyota crisis, and explores whether the fall in the company’s returns by 19% were caused purely as a result of the recall and safety concerns, or something much deeper.

We will start the external analysis with the PESTEL analysis of the automotive sector followed by the Porter’s five forces analysis and we will end by having a look at the key competitors and competitor pricing.

Toyota is a key player in global automotive market. Its structure constitutes if various production plants in different locations and a very strong branding which helps it capture a major market share. Like other enterprises, Toyota has several strengths and weakness which makes it what it is now. Toyota heavily invests in Research and development which helps it come up reputable product line which is spread out throughout the world because of its strengthening global distribution network however its recent product recalling, loose grip in key geographic areas and wrong allocation of resources shows that even a strong brand like Toyota has its weaknesses.