What has Toyota done so far?

Toyota had to deal with a lot of rough patches with the series of recalls issued in the past few months. But since then, the company has been moving forward and taking steps to correct the issues.

The company was required by Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism to submit progress reports on a quarterly basis, which summarize the actions taken by Toyota to improve various facets of the company like the product, certification, quality control, and management.

Last August, Toyota reported a list of countermeasures and process improvements to prevent the recurrence of its troubles early in the year. Toyota has now submitted the first of a series of quarterly reports that address those issues.

While the report reads almost exactly the same as what they submitted back in August, Toyota highlighted a few specifics in its measures. Those include the introduction of education programs for the management regarding certification rules and awareness of compliance, along with the involvement of a legal supervisor in attending internal certification tests.

The rest of the measures sound very vague, but as much as Toyota wants to be transparent to the public, we should understand that the brand also reserves the right to guard its trade secrets, intellectual properties, kaizen activities, and its new quality control practices.

Here are the excerpts of Toyota’s progress report:

We are reviewing our mechanisms and systems to increase legal compliance awareness among all employees and to enable them to do their work in a correct manner. This incident prompted management to make more frequent visits to the genba. Through this process, we found that we were not taking the necessary steps at the necessary times, including decisions on managing aging equipment. Going forward, management will make swift decisions on actions required in the medium to long term and will share that information with all employees. Through a series of such initiatives, we aim to be the company of choice for our customers.

We are promoting on-site management to drive development and certification work. We have also implemented measures to remedy any issues identified through that process.

  • To be able to take appropriate actions immediately when abnormalities are found, management is visiting the genba in person to learn about the actual situation to create the appropriate environments and allocate resources needed for Human Development, Monozukuri and Strengthening Foundations.
  • We have reviewed responsibilities and processes so that appropriate management can be made at each stage of development and certification application.
  • We have introduced education programs to improve management's understanding of certification rules and its awareness of compliance.
  • The Legal Supervisor is attending internal certification tests and shares audit results with management.
  • We have established means for appropriate storage and handling of certification-related data.
  • We are using digital technology to automatically generate test results (to reduce human errors and workloads, etc.).
  • We are pursuing improvement of compliance awareness in development and certification departments using educational environments, including the Quality Learning Center, and by offering e-learning opportunities to all employees.

Through Toyota's company-wide TPS training program for Certification Work, we are also working to develop a corporate culture across the Toyota Group to address fundamental challenges in development. We are treating this as an opportunity to review not only our development and certification operations but the way we work in every process, from planning to sales. In this regard, we are currently conducting kaizen activities, fully considering the effect on prior to and post processes.

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