The Toyota Corporation, Essay Example

The Toyota corporation has long been know for building quality cars at reasonable prices. They have consistently been one of the most well-known and largest-selling car manufacturers for decades. Recently, however, a crisis rocked the company, threatening to undermine their hard-won reputation: a series of failures in their braking and acceleration systems led to a series of accidents, some fatal, that endangered the very future of the company.

In response to this crisis, the company established what they referred to as a “safety crisis audit,” examining every aspect of their manufacturing process, looking for faults I the system that allowed for such a dangerous set of circumstances to take place. Eventually, they identified the suppliers of many of their outsourced parts as the primary culprits in the broken link in the chain of their safety-assurance process.

As a response to the findings of this “crisis audit,” the company has added over 40 new safety engineers intended to examine and provide greater oversight into the safety and manufacturing processes the company uses. Further, Toyota has hired a team of engineers designed to examine to processes not just of its own manufacturing, but those of its suppliers as well.  As Dino Triantafyllus, Toyota’s recently-hired new Vice President of North American Product Quality, was recently quoted, “ultimately, it’s about regaining the trust of the customer.”