Read the following articles and then respond to the questions below: Toyota reca
ID: 375558 • Letter: R
Question
Read the following articles and then respond to the questions below:
Toyota recalls 6.4 million vehicles worldwide over air bags, seat rails, steering or wipers by Michael A. Fletcher
Oh What a Feeling: Is The Toyota Brand in a Free Fall? by Tim Mojonnier
How Toyota's Crisis Management Failures Added To The Billion-Dollar Settlement by Ira Kalb
Toyota issues global recall of 6.5 million cars by Charles Riley and Wayne Chang
1. What are your thoughts on the quality control for Toyota?
2. Do you believe that Toyota will continue to recover from the quality issues? Explain why!
3. After reading these articles and chapters what do you think Toyota could do to bring their quality back up?
4. Do you think this is Toyota’s fault?
Explanation / Answer
1. Quality control for Toyota requires strengthening and sprucing up as can be gauged from the fact that there were problems with regards to different parts like faulty cable connected to air bags, problems with seat rails and problems with regards to steering columns.
Quality control at Toyota needs to be effective enough to identify faulty parts that are manufactured in house or are supplied by OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).
2. Yes, Toyota will continue to recover from the quality issues due to the fact that the company follows a philosophy of ‘customer first’ and ‘quality first’. Although it was at fault in the past the company and its management is determined to manufacture top quality and highly reliable vehicles going forward. The company makes use of SQC (statistical quality control) and TQM (total quality management) and these along with the use of kiazen (continuous improvement) philosophy will enable the company to fix its quality issues and implement creative innovation in their manufacturing.
3. To bring their quality back up Toyota should go back to its roots. Like in the 1960s when the company had used TQC (total quality control) to solve its quality issues early and effectively the company is required to do the same now. This will ensure that there are no reoccurrences of further vehicle recall due to quality issues.
Going forward Toyota should take steps to better know its suppliers as well. It should also work together with its suppliers help them improve their production methodologies.
4. In part, yes, this is Toyota’s fault. Although the problems with the airbags is directly attributable to Takata (the OEM for airbags), the quality control team and compliance oversight committee at Toyota should have determined this defect in the air bags during their quality test procedures.
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