LyrArc Article Gist
How their strains in the the the Toyota manufacturing system and how Toyota's quality is not what it once was. Its image as a environment conscious company is also suffereing with its attempt to stall new fuel economy legislation in Congress like th Big Three American companies. And new hybrid engines are being introduced in joint development between Mercedes, BMW and GM so the novelty of Toyota hybrid may just wear out. And competitors from Germany and the US are now working harder to reduce Toyota's advantage by producing quality cars. As styling design and creative innovation has not been Toyota's strong point the Americans and the Germans have an opportunity to come up with something new. Even the incentives Toyota has to offer to sell its cars have now come up to what the Gm, Ford and Chrysler had to offer. According to CNW Marketing Research Toyota's dealer incentives have almost tripled in the last 3 years to an average of $3752 per vehicle. This is not a good sign. And we may have reached a point where the difference in quality between the GM Malibu and the Honda Accord from the Toyota Camry may really not be that much. No surprise that this is shaking up Toyota. The "Customer First Initiative" in response to quality issues and recalls is to have more power put into the hands of the chief engineer for any product launch to ensure quality problems are addressed early. And the dealers have EN2 (everything matters exponentially to address quality issues at the dealer level. And there aren't enough sensei or teachers of the Toyota Production System to meet the rapid growth of plants and the Global Production Centre was designed to meet this need by training teachers in an accelerated way in Japan. But there is a sense that a lot of the old Toyota magic may be fading just as Toyota reached te peak of its popularity sometime last year or 2005. Not because Toyota hasn't made the effort but because the whole dynamics of the car industry keep changing and Germans and the Americans are also pushing harder nowadays.