Toyota quality management

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), commonly known as Toyota in the stock markets. Japanese Toyota is multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda, as a spinoff from his father’s company, Toyota Industries, to create automobiles. In July 2012 the company reported that it had manufactured its 200 millionth vehicle.

Background/overview of organization

Size of company – 300, 734 employees worldwide as of 2012.

Type of industry Automotive Manufacturing Product or service – Largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

Brief synopsis of Quality management processes

Toyota quality control, in the strict business sense, with monitoring the means of production to ensure that the finished product meets a certain standard. There are number of different elements that are important for the control quality that which includes the skilled management, knowledge of the production process, and themotivationand eagerness of the workers at all levels. In general, Toyota makes sure that the quality of automobile remains the standard across the board in the manufacturing that involves the assembly line.

Quality control is the general process that seeks out to bring together a wide variety of factors which helped to meet the standard set by Toyota. Introduction to the Problem Identify the Quality Issues that need to be addressed Vehicle recalls, November 2009 through 2010, Toyota recalled more than 9 million cars and trucks worldwide in several recall campaigns, and briefly halted production and sales. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regarding the defective accelerator pedals issues in which in early 2010, Toyota paid the fines without an admission of wrong doing.

The U. S. NHTSA, and Japanese Ministry of Transport have been involved in the investigations with the driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents. This included sticking accelerator pedals, and pedals caught under floor mats. Through the years Toyota Motor Corporation has seen major growth throughout their timeline hierarchy. Toyotas growth can be attributed to Toyotas company orientation and that is recognizing the consumers demands, having the right products in place to meet these demands.

Opportunities

Since Toyotas massive vehicle recalls, Toyotas management implemented new initiatives that included equipping all 2011 and future vehicles with Smart StopTechnology, and enhanced event data recorders. Toyota also launched a training center that will be utilized just for quality training, and training team members in customer first practices. These initiatives and training will evolve Toyota Motor Corporation back on top as the leading quality car manufacturer. Toyota is taking an approach to what it calls performance-based facilities management (PBFM).

PBFM is facility management with a twist, were the focus will be on more what needs to be done, then leaving the decisions to the employees that are doing the work. This will allow Toyota to spend more time looking at the strategic planning as opposed to the micro-managing what the company has done in the past. Throughout the years Toyotas Total Quality Management (TQM) has been its strength year after year, winning numerous quality awards. Along with quality, Toyota pioneered their own lean system called Toyota Production System (TPS) which identifies and reduces/eliminates waste and variance in processes.

Managing product quality was Toyota Motor Corporations claim to gaining market share over other U. S. car manufacturers but recently, during the last few years, Toyotas product quality has been somewhat dismal with over 5. 3 million vehicles recalled since 2009 and 2010 due to safety issues.

Possible Quality Management Initiative Lean Principles

Today, Toyota is not so much focused on automobile production like it was back in the 1970s. Instead Toyota is focused on creating a continuous and uninterrupted flow in operations.

Thus, for many of their processes, they are continually striving toward a target condition of a single or one-piece flow, sometimes known as make one, move one. Where this can be achieved, work-in process are naturally reduced and velocity is drastically increased as a result of the single-piece transfer batch size. Managing Quality – Quality is an integral focus of operations management. Quality offers companies a way of enhancing their competiveness and strategic position in the marketplace.

Recently, with more and more companies accepting the importance of quality, it has become both an order qualifier and, if lacking, an order loser. Product quality was Toyota Motor Corporations claim to gaining market share over other U. S. car manufacturer but recently in the last few years the product quality Toyota hung their hat on, shattered like broken glass, and in order for Toyota Motor Corporation to regain 75 plus years of quality excellence, that was shattered these last few years, Toyota needs to recognize that it once again need to qualitatively improve on its supply chain management processes.