In that Wolfsburg car factory I had the honor to work for for more than 30 years, one of the many pearls of wisdom was: “Wenn man nicht mehr weiter weiss, gründet man nen Arbeitskreis.” If you are totally out of options, establish a committee.
Toyota seems to have taken that Teutonic haiku to heart. The Nikkei reports that Toyota Motor “has formed an expert panel, chaired by President Akio Toyoda, to analyze the potential risks throughout its global production and sales networks.”
As far as committees go, lean it won’t be. It will be a monster of a committee: “The president will be joined by executives ranked senior managing director and higher,” The Nikkei writes. ”The committee’s composition will change depending on the type and locality of a particular problem, and input from lawyers and consultants will be sought as warranted.”
For added redundancy, Toyota established a second committee. This one is tasked with “global quality.” According to Nikkei’s report, this one “will monitor quality issues concerning design, production and service, enabling the carmaker to quickly determine the need for recalls and voluntary repairs.”
Toyota must have read TTAC’s report a few days ago that bemoaned the loss of top-level quality-focused meetings shortly after Akio Toyoda took over early last year. While we have Toyota’s ear, let’s recommend one of VW’s better inventions, the “Schadenstisch” (damage table). In that circle, a failing part was literally put on a table, surrounded by a team of experts from various departments. At the end of the (often heated) discussion, someone had to take the part off the table. He and his department were then responsible for fixing the problem.
Toyota can pick up the idea without being blamed for copying: When Piech took over in 1993, he tried to introduce Toyota’s “kaizen” to VW. He failed. “Kaizen” was renamed “kontinuierlicher Verbesserungsprozess,” and was then quickly forgotten.
I’m trying to find something cynical to say about “quality by committee”, but it is probably a step in the right direction. Quality cannot come from suppliers or line workers; it must come from the top.
While we have Toyota’s ear, let’s recommend one of VW’s better inventions, the “Schadenstisch” (damage table). In that circle, a failing part was literally put on a table, surrounded by a team of experts from various departments
The problem is that is a retroactive solution, not a proactive one. The German makes were always good at retroactive problem solving, but proactively building reliable cars was not their strong point, and something like this isn’t necessarily going to help. At worst, it allows scapegoating.
Toyota’s problem is communications, not quality. A quality committee is a wasted exercise, but what would help is extending the empowerment of manufacturing staff to flag problems at assembly to the dealer and field-engineer level to flag problems and have those issues to taken seriously at HQ.
The problem is it’s a sexier story to say Toyota has a quality problem then to say they have a communications problem.
Interesting perspective. What you seem to be saying is that communications are the underlying cause of Toyota’s quality problem. But if this is true, shouldn’t a well-run “quality committee” identify this and make improved communications part of its mandate?
It seems that you are drawing the sort of conclusions for which the quality committee would (or at least should) be responsible.
The first generation starts a business. The second generation runs it. And the third generation ruins it.
Akio Toyoda is in over his head. He’s like a rabbit frozen in the headlights. He should acknowledge his limitations and step aside. Bill Ford in the same situation handed the reins to Allen Mulally and is basking in his reflected glory.
Agreed. But in the case of Ford, this maxim has to be twisted to fit … because the Fords seem to do this whole cycle within single generations:
1st built (early HF I)
2nd tried to run but blocked by 1st (died too young)
1st nearly bankrupted (late HF I)
3rd rebuilt with non-family leaders (early HF II)
3rd expanded, then took control (mid)
3rd nearly bankrupted (late HF II)
4th interfered w/management then took control (Ed II and Billy)
4th nearly bankrupted (Billy)
4th rebuilt with non-family leaders
The guy needs to turn back the clocks. His predecessor cut 10 billion in parts costs and reliability went down. After Toyoda replaced the guy, and while their reliability was really starting to slip, Toyoda announced he wanted to cut costs by a further 30%. What part of “Bash head against wall harder” does this guy not get?
Toyota was wildly profitable with a good reputation, but their desire to drastically cut costs to keep stock markets excited bit them in the butt. They should have stayed the course and started buying back stock to drive the price up.
The guy needs to turn back the clocks. His predecessor cut 10 billion in parts costs and reliability went down
If he reverses those cuts, Toyota will get eaten alive by more agile competitors. There are very few ways you can be a high-cost producer and almost no ways ytou can do it with a mass-market product. What you’re proposing ,might work for Lexus models, but it would be suicide elsewhere. Cost increases would eat R&D, dividends, cash flow, everything.
Contrary to commonly-held beliefs, Toyota’s reliability and customer TCO went down under Kat Watanabe’s tenure. Toyota’s problem isn’t so much making a reliable product as it is ensuring that personnel on the ground (field engineers, dealers, PR people) have better communication to the executive when something like this comes out.
This was a “tail of the dinosaur” moment: all sorts of parties let Toyota know there were perception problems up ahead, but because they have a (well earned) reputation for quality, the executive was slow.
I disagree that the executive was unaware of what was up ahead. Not only did they know, they had already taken long term action to resolve the systemic problem. In fact, if you dig into that previous TTAC discussion link Bertel posted above , and the linked source article in it, you’ll find this, the outcome of that “cancelled” executive quality committee:
>>>>>>The slowdown-and-be-careful program is called Customer First, and has greenlighted requests from engineers for more time, money and personnel to develop vehicles. According to AN, chief engineers requested the following:
Better original computerized blueprints
More prototypes
More quality checkers
More time
Bigger budgets<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Now, maybe they should have done this a few years ago. OK, I can buy that, but I think the implication being made today, perhaps not by you, is that the sudden accel issues aren’t being communicated. I think that’s a premature conclusion, and I also think that, systemically, the “fix” for that and other product development issues lies in properly executing a more robust product development process, and providing more resources to it, as Toyota claims to have done per the above.
I’m still searching for something that I KNOW they’ve left unattended in all this, something that sets them apart from the other NA OEM’s. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, or don’t have the requisite “eyes” to see it, but I can’t seem to spot anything.
Unlike many problems in the auto business you can actually throw money at a “quality” problem and make it better.
If you are behind the quality curve, as Toyota currently finds itself, a good way to win back hearts and minds is to extend warranties, and fix stuff you normally wouldn’t. Yes this costs money, but it makes for repeat customers.
If you are ahead of the quality curve, you can give your engineering teams higher reliability and performance goals, then give them the resources to execute. Sacrifice a little profit in the short term, to build long lasting relationships in the long term.
-ted
If you are behind the quality curve, as Toyota currently finds itself, a good way to win back hearts and minds is to extend warranties, and fix stuff you normally wouldn’t. Yes this costs money, but it makes for repeat customers.
This is actually a really good idea. Your customer perception is completely in the hands of your dealers and front-line customer service reps, and empowering these people to make things better for the customer pays serious dividends.
I doubt very much that Toyota has a build quality problem. The problem with the Prius braking system and the unintended acceleration problem is a design quality issue. If make a product with a design flaw perfectly reliable the design flaw remains.
WRONG! Toyota has had quality problems for 20yrs now and people just keep buying them. Their so-called reputation for quality was born out of the sales department, NOT the engineering department;their products are NO better than anyone else. Toyota had their heyday from about ’75-85; as GM has proved you can only live on your reputation for so long. Toyota lost me as a customer in ’86, glad to see they are now getting what they long deserved! ‘nutcase
Sigh.
So what’s your idea of a “reliable” manufacturer? And please don’t say VW.
My family members and myself went through a half-dozen American cars in the nineties and noughties. All were garbage except for my current ’96 Grand Marquis. When the wife needed a new car a couple years back, we decided to go with Toyota and have never looked back.
VW and Toyota both have excellent build quality.
For decades, VW has suffered from design flaws that make their vehicles awful to own. Bad coil packs, bad window regulators, bad brake light switches, etc… And, considering that most of these cars are fairly new, I’m hearing a lot of grumbling about their new six-speed automatic.
With Toyota’s cost-cutting campaigns, they’re going to get cheaper components (like VW’s window regulators and coil packs).
Statues of Committees?
“Les Bourgeois de Calais” by Auguste Rodin 1889.
That’s not a statue to a committee — it’s a statue to commemorate six individuals who were willing to sacrifice themselves to save the city.
Bertel, I counted the syllables in the English translation of the Teutonic haiku. Bravo! well done!
The idea that a committee is by design an ineffectual or inefficient management tool is decidedly a Western concept. I am actually somewhat surprised that this is what Bertel seems to imply here, given his experience and background.
In a culture like Japan (or a lot of East Asian countries), a committee sometime is a VERY effective way of leadership and to get a message across to all parts of a company. And it is used often inside big companies as an internal management tool. For Toyota, it may be that they have gotten too comfortable in their own quality myth, and in the pursue for #1, certain manufacturing and engineering vigilance was lost in the last a few year. Setting up this committee may just be the right thing to do to get everyone in the company start paying attention again. Perhaps instead of the name “committee”, using something like “special task force” or “swap team” will be more Western media friendly.
“Swap team?” I think you meant “SWAT team.”
The last thing needed is endless meetings by overpaid executives who don’t have a clue about what the public actually want and need. Take the suits off, get down on the factory floor with the other people who work there, and figure stuff out. We make, sell, and service cars. Period. We don’t have to play all those stupid sales games anymore.
I was hoping the loud suits, ties, white belts and shoes, big cigars, would be gone a long time ago.
A product should sell on its own merits, not on what it’s pretended or advertised to be.
end rant