Toyota Case

Quality problem

Toyota is recalling more than 6.5million cars worldwide to fix a variety of problems, including faulty steering wheels and seats. Toyota’s quality problems in the United States were signaled with the initial recall in late 2009 for problems with floor mats, but they didn’t end there. Over the next four months, the company recalled 3.4 million more vehicles in three separate recalls over and above the initial 3.8 million, for a total of more than 7 million. There were several quality and manufacturing problems such as: potentially sticky gas pedals, pedal entrapment and software glitches that affected braking on some models. There are series of quality problem result in Toyota recall incident. The following solutions can be adopted to solve the problems:

Firstly, the major problem that is observed is improper seat quality management in KSF. Most of the seat problems were occurring because of this mismanagement like,

wrong, missing and broken parts, wrinkles and missing bolster. Also, KSF inspection of seats before shipping is not proper. There need to check the method followed by KFS while inspection of seats because several of defective seats are being send as fit. Maybe by providing more training to the worker this problem could be solved.

Secondly, to build a supplier chain development program, this program would help in providing suppliers training and development for their existing staff and manufacturing process by providing them technological aid and at the same time management expertise. Also can provide development of techniques such as Jidoka or Kaizen, all of these kind of techniques will help reduce their cost of production which in turn will help Toyota to acquire raw materials and low price without actually lowering profit margin of suppliers and gaining their confidence, also ensure the high quality producing process.