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Toyota Recall Report Finds Internal Flaws

New York Times Original article ›

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A seven member panel formed by Toyota to look into Toyota's recall problems made its recommendations recently. The panel's report says Toyota was not good at responding to criticism from outside. Company executives looked at complaints about sudden acceleration defensively or skeptically, and viewed regulators in an "adversarial" manner. The NHTSA also has come under criticism in investigations, because to some extent Toyota's close connections with the NHTSA made it possible for the company to drags its feet in responding to complaints. Edmunds.com CEO, Jeremy Anwyl, says Toyota has a stable and predictable way of doing things and this does not work well in a crisis, leaving Toyota uniquely vulnerable to this. The insularity of executives in Japan because of the lack of non-Japanese on the Board. and in other important positions, magnifies the problems when they are rooted in a crosscultural environment. Such complaints in the U.S. media are viewed differently than in Japan. The report also pointed out that safety and quality are two different things - that processes that improve quality will not necessarily produce safe vehicles. By putting safety under quality and making everyone responsible for quality, no specific executives were assigned responsibility for safety. One of the lessons learned from the recall crisis is that specific responsibility needs to be assigned for safety, and the person in charge has to report directly to the President and top managers. One of the panel members, Brian O'Neil, a former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Saferty, says the old adage is true in this case- when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

Toyota Panel makes its recommendations for changes in global management structures

03/01/2010

Reforms and restructuring after the 2010 recalls. The Toyota panel said there needs to be one executive responsible for the entire U.S. operation. Before the crisis in vehicle safety Toyota had separate engineering, sales and production operations, but no head of the entire U.S. operation. Honda and Nissan have a head of U.S. operations. Another problem the panel sees is the insularity of the Japanese headquarters management. It recommends foreign directors be appointed to the board. Even after the safety crisis and a change in management structure to a smaller board, the lack of foreign directors remains a serious unaddressed problem.

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