Tokyo, Japan – The huge automaker Toyota has announced that it realizes that it has an auto defects dilemma largely due to the massive growth of the large company. President Katsuaki Watanabe acknowledges that progress has been good for the company, yet has yielded issues with items such as: auto defects design, developmental problems, production issues, and problems originating with maintenance and suppliers of parts. This has been an ongoing issue for the past few years and much of it is due to the global size and constant expansion the company has undergone in more recent times. The company often faces time crunches and a lack of expert help to solve some of the problems the face on a continual basis.
Toyota Working on Improving Quality Standards
Toyota and President Watanabe are working to improve quality standards to resolve the issues and elevate the status of the kind of product their producing. He’s careful to not make excuses about the expansion causing the problems. Watanabe has been forthright and candid about the issues since they’ve been discovered.
During 2007 Toyota beat out General Motors Corp. and stepped into the number one automaker category in global vehicle production. However, General Motors Corp. still remains top dog in automotive sales. Toyota had taken the number one spot in the automaker category largely to the production of the Prius gas-electric hybrids and Camry sedan.
Toyota produced just under 10,000,000 vehicles during 2007, while GM produced 9.284 million. Sales differed between the two companies. Toyota sold approximately 9.366 vehicles compared to GM who sold 9,369,524. GM has been at the top of the heap in auto sales for a record seventy-seven years.
Toyota Trying To Reduce Number of Defects
At this point President Watanabe is attempting to get his arms around the quality situation. He has given direction to issue a six month lag on some products. His hope is to tackle the quality problem during this timeframe and bring forth a resolution. Each problem is being reviewed on an individual basis and ideas for rectifying the issues are being assessed so the same issues don’t keep surfacing. Watanabe has retained a humble attitude regarding the defect dilemma. On several occasions he has apologized profusely for the problem and has been proactive in looking into all avenues to come to a resolution.
He has also addressed global concerns surrounding the slowdown of U.S. auto sales and how it has helped to hard hit the U.S. economy. However, he has attempted to put down concerns about the U.S. auto industry continuing to take a nose dive. Watanabe believes that the U.S. economy at its core principles is strong.
U.S. automakers have assured the global community that they expect an upswing in the U.S. auto industry come the second quarter of 2008. This will be due largely to the boost the economy is receiving from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan. Also, there are a lot of people looking to buy that have been conservative in the past due to the state of the economy.
