Toyota's Revolving Door and Failing Brakes
I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid piling on the Toyota recall story. But this excellent Bloomberg story–describing how two former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials helped Toyota avoid more comprehensive responses to its brake failures on four different occasions–deserves a lot of attention.
Former regulators hired by Toyota Motor Corp. helped end at least four U.S. investigations of unintended acceleration by company vehicles in the last decade, warding off possible recalls, court and government records show.Christopher Tinto, vice president of regulatory affairs in Toyota’s Washington office, and Christopher Santucci, who works for Tinto, helped persuade the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to end probes including those of 2002-2003 Toyota Camrys and Solaras, court documents show. Both men joined Toyota directly from NHTSA, Tinto in 1994 and Santucci in 2003.
[snip]
NHTSA opened eight investigations of unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles from 2003 to 2010, according to Safety Research & Strategies Inc., a Rehoboth, Massachusetts, group that gathers data from NHTSA and other sources for plaintiff’s attorneys and consumers. Three of the probes resulted in recalls for floor mats. Five were closed, meaning NHTSA found no evidence of a defect.
In four of the five cases that were closed, Tinto and Santucci worked with NHTSA on Toyota’s responses to the consumer complaints the agency was investigating, agency documents show.
Here are the four known investigations that were limited or squelched:
March 2004: NHTSA limits investigation of throttle control system to unintended acceleration events lasting less than a minute, seemingly dismissing longer unintended acceleration problems because driver may have used the wrong pedal. (114 similar cases found)
2005: NHTSA ends investigation after Toyota tells it there was “no evidence of a system or component failure was found and the vehicles were operating as designed” (100 cases found; 59 investigated)
August 2006: Toyota says it finds “no abnormality in the throttle actuator, or controller, which the petitioner blamed,” but does find “evidence that returned actuators had corroded due to water intrusion caused by circumstances ‘such as driving through a flooded road, in the heavy rain or a hurricane’ and a drain hose was modified to prevent future water intrusion” (3,546 cases addressed under warranty)
2008: Toyota says it “couldn’t find enough evidence to support allegations of unintended acceleration in 2006-2007 Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks” (478 incidents reported)
One things that becomes clear from this is that there have been a significant (though not huge) number of complaints on these issues. While I can’t be sure, it seems that at least one of these was only addressed at the dealer level, which would not be able to determine a bigger electronic issue.
Now, as the article makes clear, there’s no evidence that the two former NHTSA employees did anything improper in their work with Toyota. But it does appear these former NHTSA knew how to game the system to make sure NHTSA decided it wasn’t worth its time to investigate as each new complaint surfaced.
The Toyota recall is big, and the company is really in trouble. We have been waiting for the invasion of the robots since the 1950s, and Toyota has tried to make their cars more and more robotic. And just like in science fiction, when it really matters, ordinary citizens are helpless to control those bots.
Now we “learn” that our political leaders and regulators don’t have our best interests at heart. Because a slice of profits – directed in toward the right pockets – can short-circuit the best intentioned oversight. Which is worse: Toyota’s corporate culture that allows this to go on, or the selling out by our government? In China, these guys would lose their heads.
I would have thought that some kind of evidence would be needed to make such an exclusion. Is this a case of NTHSA accepting the “may have” suggestion from Toyota?
I think they did a poor job of designing and testing some of those automatic systems, possibly because they were in a rush to get them to market.
Keyless ignition, just as an idea, bothered me, and cruise control has always sounded like something designed to allow people to sleep at the wheel. (I don’t have those on my car, which is a stock ’02 Prius. I’m not entirely happy with standard power windows, even. I was raised with the idea that those are ‘one more thing that can go wrong’ in an expensive way.)
NHTSA seems to be more in favor of the manufacturers than of actual safety, also, based on their past record. (Remember the Explorer rollovers when the tires blew out?)
Yeah, not enough people not the parallels with the Explorer rollover thing.
I’m increasingly convinced this is electronic, and that by diagnosing these at the dealer, rather than in a contractor’s lab, they’re not going to find it. I’m sure I’ve shared this before, but I was in dealers in 2007. A couple of service guys told me that Toyotas had become as difficult as Fords to fix because their chips didn’t work as well. And I know that Toyota’s chips tend to be like a monoculture: more of them done by the same contractor than in other mfgs (and, for that matter, more of the actual chips made by the same mfg, and there are physical issues that can affect chips that few people think about).
So it would make sense that this is a chip-related programming issue that they haven’t even really begun to look at.
Well, changing the chips would be a huge expense; building some little shims or something to stick on the pedal would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
But it does seem a real case of agency capture, particularly since the two Toyota guys’ mere presence when dealing with the NHTSA guys would serve to remind the NHTSA guys that, if everyone played nice, when they left NHTSA they, too, could get a nice cushy job working for Toyota (or someone similar). Doing the Tyler Durden investigations and reporting, of course.
That’s precisely what mr. ew the former auto engineer said. But it’s not clear the shims will fix the problem.
I have no illusions that a couple shims will fix the problem – if that were the case then Woody the Pennsylvanian Backwoods Mechanic* would have long since sussed it out and fixed it better than it was made originally.
–
* Old joke: “You know your mechanic is a Pennsylvanian (a) when his favorite tool is ‘a bigger hammer’, (b) when he fixes things, they last longer and work better than the original was ever intended to, and (c) he could singlehandedly kick the asses of both teams on Junkyard Wars.”
flashing the chips was the cheapest solution in more ways then one, no manufacturing hardware expense, no install issues and the flash would make it possible to continue using the once faulty hardware
in addition, most drive by wire cars are programed so the ecu’s have a fail safe, if the brake is being applied at the same time as the throttle the brake takes priority
now imagine if these recalls happened when they were suppoesd to, the american auto industy which was already enjoying a resurgence of confidence would have had this to market against as well, the cuts might not have been neccessary, jobs might have been saved, the economy would not be in the same dire straights we realise today
big big snowball
yup. so while they tapdance around the chip issue they’ll just add a kill switch to the software and hope that drivers are able to stop their out of control cars a little faster than presently. oh, and run “we’re sorry, really really sorry” commercials every 30 damn seconds on primetime.
i’ve gone from having a car i love to having a car i fear.
I suspect that the chips are built by one of their subsidiaries – and I describe my car (which is actually pretty good: very reliable and good mileage) as having ‘no user-serviceable parts inside’.
No. They buy from chip manufacturers, as does everyone else. The chips are two degrees of separation away from them, but I have heard of instances where there is an expectation that they will buy from certain Japanese firms.
And yes, to orionATL’s point, heat is one of the things that can introduce unexpected bugs into chips.
Ah, well, I was figuring that since they’ve captured a bunch of other suppliers, or get stuff from subsidiaries, that the chips were that way also.
Heat is a potential problem (so are extremes of cold and humidity), but they should have found out about that a lot earlier: that’s a testing issue.
It may be another sign of rushing products to market, that testing didn’t catch problems well before the customers experienced them.
It is a testing issue. But, for starters, sometimes batches of chips have issues that the normal spec of the chip doesn’t have (which wouldn’t be the problem here, but is the cause of some of the chip-based problems in cars). And depending on action the heat (or cold or moisture) would interfere with, it might not be readily apparent in a test. That is, you might get a part out to meet the spec in question, without have created the specific conditions that would introduce the bug in the vehicle operation.
A number of the players here have emphasized that they tested to spec. That may suggest the problem is at least partly the way the specs were written.
Oy.
My first few jobs were in electronic assembly. There was also a short stint at a testing lab. Tell me about bad chips ….
At the least, they should be temperature-cycling the chips at the mil-spec level: several hours of cycling between extreme temperatures. I don’t know that the temperatures normally used for this are extreme enough (ISTR it’s something like -40F and +120F).
{sigh} We’ve come a long way from the “Volkswagon for Idiots” book.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Bob in AZ
My brother’s first car was a Beetle (he learned to drive on a VW pickup). He has a Vanagon. And a Corolla.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive.
My first 3 cars were Beetles, and my 4th, 5th & 6th cars were VW squarebacks. By then, the engine compartment was getting too crowded to work on easily.
The dream engine compartment to work on, I think, was the 1976(?) Nissan Sentra, IIRC– big, roomy engine compartment where everything was easy to get at. Those days are long gone.
Bob in AZ
I feel like that about my long-gone ’71 Corona. Nice roomy engine compartment. Nice reliable simple car.
(If I’d been able to reach all the way through it, I could have replaced the clutch slave cylinder without having to jack the front end up. You could see the slave cylinder looking down through the engine compartment. You just couldn’t reach it that way.)
OT – I wanna know who was the genius who decided it was a good idea to leave the padding off the steel pole next to the luge track. That’s the kind of thing the absence of a developed and powerful plaintiffs’ tort bar leads to.
Fortunate people who had their accelerators go manic and lived where that could go on for 60 seconds without *really* abrupt acceleration. In the Northeast, most rides like that would have ended in 10 seconds or less, and not happily! (More than a minute on the wrong pedal? Are they serious?)
They better not be.
If the newer models are like mine (haven’t been in one), there’s only two pedals, and they’re in the same locations as every other car’s right-foot pedals (gas pedal on the right, brake on the left).
That excuse makes much less sense than the floor-mat one (which I could buy happening).
Bad software, yes; bad hardware, yes. Drivers who suddenly forget which pedal they’re using – on the highway, in the US?? – not likely.
what the two former fed workers did, and were enticed to do by toyota, has a name –
lobbying.
my guess is that toyota’s government relations dept decided they needed to get some expertise to get the feds off their back.
there may be japanese business cultre influences in this disaster,
but the toyota cover-up, and that’s exactly what it is,
has had a distinctly america odor to it since it began to make the papers some
months ago.
this is the tobacco companies
this is genentech,
this the drug maker of vioxx,
this is the lasiks surgery medical business,
this enron,
american corporate culture at its worst- misleading, witholding info, blaming the customer (victim)-
the good ol’ stonewall approach to corporate misconduct.
what an utterly fascinating trainwreck. i can’t understand why toyota hasn’t replaced a lot of the execs at toyota america.
oh well, ford may be benefit.
but then american wprkers build toyatos, too.
if i were looking for electronic sources for the acceleration/braking problem
and i certainly would be,
i’d be looking at heat affecting the performance of cpu’s (chips).
a chip unstable within a certain temperature range might cause rare events, one of whom would be uncontrollable acceleration.
it would be interesting to learn that there were other, and quite different signs of computer instability,
maybe deceleration on rare occasions,
maybe sudden loss of engine power,
maybe quixotic braking or power steering problems.
and i wonder too about cruise control – that’s an issue tbat has bedeviled other manufacturers.
continuing
to be more clear,
cruise control is the one situation where the engine and its electronic masters take over from the driver.
maybe there is such a thing as c-c crossover.
or maybe there’s a HAL under the hood.
How is Toyota Like Citigroup & Goldman Sachs?
The irony is that Toyota’s regulatory lobbying effort was in pursuit of short-term gains that ended up causing long-term damage to their reputation. As with banking, special treatment given to firms at their own request has been damaging — even fatal, to their own existence. In Toyota’s case, it has led to the tarnishing of their once impeccable reputation, and regrettably to the deaths of 19 of their customers.
This is yet another example of corporations petitioning the government for special treatment — getting precisely what they requested — then impaling themselves on the favor. In the automaker’s case, the damage is limited to 19 deaths, hurting resale value of their vehicles, and damaging a hard won reputation.
The good news a) Toyota doesn’t need a bailout; and 2) they didn’t cripple the world’s economy . . .
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/02/how-is-toyota-like-banks-investment-houses/
well,
as every manufacture of a widely sold machine knows (or learns),
from computers to blenders to autos,
when you have 10 millions of your product circulating,
you learn things your testing folks could never imagime would happen.
a wise company, i would think, would take info like toyota was getting,
though a tiny percentage,
as valuable evidence to be explored,
not as troublesome evidence to be parted out so its message(s) could be occluded.
They may have internally–though that’s why I’m so interested that some of these investigations appear to never have gotten beyond the dealer, bc there is no way a dealer can look at code.
But they may not have found the problem.
Heck, they may not have isolated which contractor had to go looking for it.
This “local expert” blog at the SF Chronicle claims that the issue is purely software and very real.
continuing,
the premier example of this in my experience is computer software.
there’s the free beta and then there’s the first “public offering”.
stay away from that first public offering is my philosophy.
it is bound to be buggy.
fortunately, the using public will discover the problem, to their irritation,
and make it known to the software publisher.
which brings to mind the question,
could the toyota problem be software rather than cpu’s?
Also expressed as ‘avoid version 1’.
Any version number that begins with ‘0.’ is bad news, too.
It almost certainly is software.
But that gets to a point I’ve made a hundred times. With a software problem or a software problem in hardware connected to the Net, you just send out a patch. Voila! Problem fixed. How often does the software you use regularly send out new patches in this day and age? Once every two weeks?
But when it’s a chip buried inside the dashboard that can’t be dismantled easily, how do you send out those easy patches?
This is one of the things that–I think–will save the Volt. It’s even MORE software driven. And it’s attached, by definition, to their OnStar system. So the Volt will be one of hte first cars they will be able to flash updates to.
drive by wire isn’t a buried chip, it’s all in the ecu, a simple flash through the ob port
thanks matutinal,
that was an interesting read.
especially, the part about the recent download.
Screw hearings on Toyota, per se. How ’bout hearings on the phenomenon of regulatory capture, which prematurely kills or maims tens of thousands of Americans a year in everything from accelerating Toyotas to medical mishaps to industrial accidents to food poisoning?
The Woz thinks it’s a software problem:
We also have some earlier coverage at SW:
It could be–could be–that this is a problem in the computer that controls the electric motor in the Prius. Now, that wouldn’t necessary be so bad, but–if the accounts are correct there’s a second, much worse, design problem: the emergency brake doesn’t have a cutoff for the electric motor. An emergency brake stops a runaway gasoline engine by stalling the engine; an electric motor can’t be stopped that way. If that’s so, safety demands that a cutoff switch be included in the vehicles–in fact, in all future electric vehicles.
And if not, more food for corvids! Croak!
thanks ew and others
when one begins to really understand a problem it never turns out to be as simple as it seemed when dashing off that comment.
bob schact @26
the dream engine compartment to work on was my ’76 mercury marquis with a 400+ engine.
the damned engine compartment was so big a shadetree mechanic needed a cinderblock to reach to the center.
there was a foot of space between the end of the radiator and the beginning of the engine.
bought it for $800, kept it for four years for one of my teenagers, and sold it for $200 to a virginia mountaineer who said all
he wanted it for was to make occasional trips to atlanta.
Toyota achieved their corporate reputation due to the Toyoda family’s philosophy. This philosophy incorporates both “people” and “tools”. The American business model has completely ignored the former and generally pays lip service to the latter.
I think that is one reason we have such a surfeit of “Lean”, “Six Sigma”, and Continuous Process Improvement programs running around. American business loves the “tools” without realizing they don’t function without the other half of the philosophy.
This failure may be either mechanical or electronic, but in the end it will be a failure to remain true to the Toyoda philosophy when Toyota came to America.
Actually, it is almost certainly a Japanese bug, not an American one.
Furthermore, one of Toyota’s inherent quality problems–one I have written about for over a year–is a preference for Japanese contractors, regardless of their bid quality. That not only breeds a certain complacency among its top contractors, but among Toyota contractors, when you fuck up, you don’t want to tell Toyota bc the stakes are so huge. So you bury it.
I would put at least 50% odds on this being a problem specifically because of Toyota’s culture, not in spite of it, and definitely not because of American values.
not quite
toyota was subsidized by their government and could have never competed against the american auto industry without that support
it was not their “family philosophy” it was their “government sponsorship” that put the american auto industry at a disadvantage
to wit, ala thom hartman
That’s ignoring that they’ve been around nearly as long as most US automakers. (Who were subsidized in different ways – protectionism comes to mind.)
Also remember that various states were competing to get assembly plants (especially Toyota and Honda), to the point of nearly giving them the land and the building, which to me is a major subsidy.
protectionism is a good thing, all countries need to protect their labor and manufacturing
e’w @39 hadenough @38
the problem may have been generated by toyota’s culture,
but the response here has been all-american p.r. it seems to me – and what a disaster.
take this quote from the seattle weekly article cited by raven333 @32:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-04-22/news/the-flip-side-of-the-perfect-prius/1
[“You get these customers that say, ‘I stood on the brake with all my might and the car just kept on accelerating.’ They’re not stepping on the brake,” says Toyota corporate spokesman Bill Kwong. “People are so under stress right now, people have so much on their minds. With pagers and cell phones and IM, people are just so busy with kids and family and boyfriends and girlfriends. So you’re driving along and the next thing you know you’re two miles down the road and you don’t remember driving, because you’re thinking about something else.”]
toyota corporate spokesman bill kwong blaming the customer, belittling the customer feedback, talking down to us rubes (as bob somerby would say).
this condescending, hear no evil, approach is quintessential american corporate p.r.
And doesn’t convince the public, either.
Do they really think that someone who’s been driving for thirty or forty years doesn’t know what pedal they’re stepping on? (Yes, it can happen, but not usually on the road.)
EW- “when you fuck up, you don’t want to tell Toyota bc the stakes are so huge. So you bury it.” I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Toyota. I can’t find anything resembling this in their philosophy. Can you?
The idea that a supplier, domestic or foreign, would hide a defect is much more an American business model then anything postulated in the Toyoda family’s philosophy. In fact, it is diametrically opposed to their proposition that anyone and everyone is responsible for immediately addressing quality issues.
Obviously Toyota’s philosophy failed but the “fear” you reference, even if that is the fundamental cause, is supposed to be addressed by the dedication to people and relationships espoused in the Toyoda’s philosophy. That dedication to the human side of manufacturing is something that American industry has never had.
As an aside: At least initially, these issues were limited to American production vehicles. Maybe that changed.
Perris – I have to say Yes, quite! The Japanese government did subsidize their automotive industry heavily. So what? Are you going to claim that we didn’t? The big three chose to produce JUNK for a couple of decades. Remember the Chrysler “K” cars? The fit and finish of American automotive production was for many years unsatisfactory. We won’t even go into mileage and longevity. Trade barriers don’t make much difference when there is no market for your product.
If you don’t believe philosophy had any part in Toyota’s success then please explain the JTMP, NUMMI and the many attempts to adapt and copy that philosophy for American manufacturing. And why Honda and Nissan did not have an equivalent impact.
I don’t want to defend Toyota’s actions in these circumstances.I believe they failed their philosophy as much as their customers. I also wonder how much of that failure was due to trying to Americanize their corporation. Particularly on the “people” side.
Um, I know of very specific examples where just that has happened. And among Japanese as well as American contractors.
You’re mistaking Toyota’s branded “philosophy” and their very ruthless approach to contracting (remember, I’m saying this is the behavior of contractors, since that’s who makes pieces parts these days), which is exacerbated by their use of fewer contractors. Contractors will do anything–including working virtually for free–to try to get into Toyota’s stable, and Toyota is happy to demand that of them. And contractors will avoid doing anything to get kicked out.
I believe they could not have competed without their government support, I do not mean protectionsism, I happen to believe all governments should protect their economy, labor and industry
all things being equal, they could not have made the cars as well and as competitive in the aspects you point out if not for government intervention and I am not talking about protectionism which has been given a bad rap
as far as protectionism, I believe it needs to be aimed at labor, whence a country should tariff foreign and demestic manufacturers that don’t have equal standards for their labor force
I also agree our auto companies made crap but what I am saying is the foreign companies would have made crapier crap had not their repsective auto industry been supported respectively more then our industry
for instance, mercedes was always a good car but it was always more money, and the differance in money for a mercededs did not justify the differance in quality, for instance you would pay 4 times the price for a car twice as good
EW – I’m not sure that pointing out Toyota’s failure to live up to their philosophical roots leaves me mistaken. If Toyota has Walmart-ized their behavior doesn’t that beg the question: How much of that change in behavior is due to their Americanization?
I came into studying TPS because I was tasked with implementing a Continuous Process Improvement system into a large manufacturing plant. One of the first things I discovered was the fundamental difference in how the Toyada family historically approached both their people, and subsequently, their suppliers. As opposed to American corporations, Toyota was successful because they did value people and their input. It wasn’t just the kind of lip service given to American workers.
I believe this is the single greatest impediment to all of these programs in American manufacturing. We’ll tell people how important they are as we stagnate their wages… or demand “productivity” increases… or walk them out the door … or demand lower prices from suppliers. And then wonder why they are not Team players or show no loyalty!
I think your complaints about the Toyota corporation are accurate when viewed through the lens of what they have become. But they have become that by drifting from their philosophy. Had they stuck with the TPS, this mess would have possibly been minimized. Personally, I still like the Philosophy and hope this incident points them back towards it.
The idea that protectionism and providing a government incubator being solely responsible for Toyota’s previous success is, in my opinion, nonsensical. If there was any truth to that idea why didn’t those factors benefit Honda and Nissan to the same degree?
One aspect that I don’t believe has been specifically pointed out is that Japanese government/corporation interaction has historically been much more intertwined then American interaction. This may be part of Parris’ argument and may have come into play with the hiring of these former regulators.
But there is not evidence it has anything to do with “Americanization.”
What I’m describing happens with Japanese suppliers, and what I’m describing happens much worse with Toyota than other manufacturers. So you may continue to talk about philosophy all you want, but blaming Toyota’s failures on America, when American manufacturers have LESS of this problem, is just ridiculous.
I would argue that, in fact, it may be closer to the opposite as culprit here. The Japanese in general, and Toyota in particular, are much more insular about their suppliers and admitting fault in their vaunted manufacturing. This may actually be one of those rare instances where greater “Americanization” might have served them better.
I’m not going to go that far, because I haven’t seen evidence for it being a systemic problem only at Toyota. Regulatory capture, though, and government looking the other way, is not limited to the US. Poor design, on the other hand, and bad testing practices, those are a sign of something wrong.
Whatever happened seems to have happened in the last six or seven years, because the earlier models aren’t having this sort of problem, and there’s been enough time for it to show up.
(I wouldn’t buy anything from Nissan: their quality is poor.)
there are two important issues in the toyota debacle:
– how did the poor quality metal pieces, silicon pieces, and/or software get into several million toyotas sold in the us
– the conduct of north american toyota in responding to customer and u s. govt complaints.
i am more interested in the second, having an insatiable appetite for cover-ups by organizations.
in that latter area the conduct of toyota seems to me typical for american corporations,
and typically self-defeating in the long run.
i am personally very supportive of hadenough’s argument for using the toyota
business philosophy as a model for an american business.
there are also american models with similar philosophies.
“the age of consumer capitalism” by r. martin (h bus review, j-f 2010),
describes how following a customer-focused (aka people-focused) corporate philosophy allowed some american corporations to outperform their industry confrers.
within the article is the story of how johnson&johnson ceo james burke handled the tylenol poisoning scare.
grandpa toyoda would have approved.
EW – I don’t have any personal experience with Toyota other then as a satisfied consumer. It appears that you may have some directly negative contact with their manufacturing operations. I have some of the same negative memories with exporting products to Japan.
I also have a whole lot of experience with supplying Walmart and America’s largest fast food chains. The experiences you describe best fits those business models, not the Japanese.
Our exports to Japan were subject to extremely strict quality demands. That was known up front and was a large part of the negotiated price. I have had the (dis)pleasure of having a multi-million dollar shipment refused at the dock in Japan because of the legibility of a case code. Definitely not a good day at work.
The American companies I dealt with were a whole different beast. “The lowest price…always” and “we want it for 20% less than last year or we’ll go somewhere else” were standard negotiating positions. Quality is and was an afterthought. I don’t see that lack of quality in the automotive industry today. Marketing and market projection may still be weak spots but manufacturing quality appears to meet or exceed foreign levels.
That being said, I don’t believe I have blamed Toyota’s problems on America. I blame this issue on Toyota failing their own purported beliefs. I personally see aspects of typical traditional american corporate behavior woven into that failure but that could be completely off base. It may have more to do with the fact that the CEO for the past ten years was not a member of the Toyoda family. That has recently changed. So far I haven’t been impressed with Mr. Toyoda’s response but we’ll have to wait and see.
You can dismiss philosophy out of hand if you chose to do so, but I will continue to maintain that had Toyota adhered to that philosophy when they became a US manufacturer, we might not be having this conversation.
I appreciate your thoughts on this and other subjects. You are a great source for information and explanation in a large number of areas. We’ll just have to disagree on what constitutes “ridiculous”.
Again, I think you’re explaining something that is wrong, worldwide, for Toyota on American business practices. It has little to do with them being in the US other than the size of the market.
THere is abundant evidence publicly that in fact it’s probably more to do with Toyota’s own culture (and, critically, with the culture they foster in contractors) than anything else. And yes, I am aware of a great deal more evidence that there are problems taht are worse with Toyota than with other suppliers, partly because of things that are otherwise seen as quality and efficiency related.
That you’re not aware of these things do not make them untrue.
One more thing. It’s easy to say “Oh look at Toyota’s philosophy, it sets the standard for the industry” and to some degree that’s true (in the same way that time to market has been benchmarked against Toyota, which may mean every other car company has a problem bc they’ve been trying to match Toyota’s development timelines with similar quality sacrifices).
But the issue I keep coming back to is the contractors.
Toyota’s philosophy, internally, may be all well and good. But their practices with suppliers CLEARLY incents other philosophies. And there is no way, outsourcing as much as car companies do, to blithely assume the philosophy at the manufacturer will be shared by contractors who are being incented to do something entirely different.
The problem with Toyota is threefold: 1) They tend to favor Japanese contractors that will react a certain way to errors, 2) they tend to push contractors further than others, incented partly by concentrating more of their business with a few contractors, and 3) Their favor towards a few contractors is sometimes at the expense of appropriate competition for a part, meaning they’re choosing a less acceptable alternative for non-product reasons, partly in the name of their purported quality and efficiency standards.
And as bmaz says, their reputation allows(ed) them to get away with this, dismissing further scrutiny, which meant they postponed actually trying to fix it.
Finally, per some experienced service people, this seems to have become a much bigger problem with Toyota as electronics increased. It WAS true that, mechanically, they had superb quality. But that wasn’t true with electronics, for whatever reason. The very same processes that resulted in exceptional quality, mechanically, resulted in subpar quality electronically. Don’t know what it is, but it’s likely some of the factors I laid out above (which I’m getting form a different area of the business).
Apologies – Dbl post
Hey, guess what, turns out the key Congresscritters set to investigate Toyota have ties to it. Go figure.
I wonder what Bob Corker thinks of all this Toyota mess?
today’s latimes article on the electronics issue:
“For Toyota, the crucial question is the electronics”
the issue of toyota america’s extraordinarily deceitful explanations to the public for the acceleration problem some of their cars have had seems to be an issue that this weblog does not care to address.
let me provide readers and commenters here with a reference point for my position that toyota america’s response – for years – to their customers’ acceleration problem has been an outstanding example of american corporate cover-up skills (old-school style: hear-no-evil, don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about).
you’ll find some examples of toyota’s north american corporate bullshit here,
and not just one steaming pile:
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/our-point-of-view.aspx
[Our Point of View
“Our Point of View” is written by Toyota associates and explores current issues in the automotive industry. From time-to-time, they will contribute posts that we hope will be of interest to the Toyota community. We encourage you to speak up, tell us what’s on your mind and say whether you agree or disagree with our posts. Thanks for visiting… and enjoy!
December 23, 2009 by Irv Miller
Setting the Record Straight
Today the Los Angeles Times published an article that wrongly and unfairly attacks Toyota’s integrity and reputation. While outraged by the Times’ attack, we were not totally surprised. The tone of the article was foreshadowed by…
December 10, 2009 by Irv Miller
A Healthy Discussion on Safety
The following letter was submitted to the Los Angeles Times in response to a Dec. 5, 2009 editorial. The Times published the letter on Dec. 9. Here is the link to the L.A. Times editorial. December 5, 2009 To:…
November 18, 2009 by Irv Miller
2010 IIHS Top Safety Pick Awards Tells Just Part of the Story
On November 18, 2009, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) issued a news release headlined: “27 Winners of 2010 Top Safety Pick Award.” Within the release, IIHS states: “Missing the mark: Not a single…
November 06, 2009 by Irv Miller
Unintended Acceleration: Toyota Addresses the Issues
Recently, there has been some controversy regarding a safety recall that Toyota is undertaking. We want to take this opportunity to set the record straight with a chronology of the events of the past week. On Friday,…
November 04, 2009 by Irv Miller
Toyota’s Statement Regarding NHTSA News Release
In regard to the news release issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Wednesday, Nov. 4, Toyota offers the following response: It was never our intention to mislead or provide inaccurate information. Toyota agrees…
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how does this cover-up language grab you, dear reader?
My first decades as a driver were all as a VW customer. When VW stopped making what it called “squarebacks” (i.e., small station wagons), I switched first to Toyota Corollas and then to a Camry. I was happy with those vehicles, but due to lucky good timing, I switched to Ford Focus wagons at just about the time Toyota decided to relax its quality control standards. I am now the happy owner of a 2004 Ford Focus Wagon, and am quite happy with it. I don’t plan to get another car until Ford re-introduces the small compact wagons into its lineup. Or maybe until I am satisfied with a hybrid compact wagon.
Bob in AZ
There may be multiple problems, including software.
This stands out becuase of the numbers (3,546):
August 2006: …“evidence that returned actuators had corroded due to water intrusion caused by circumstances” (3,546 cases addressed under warranty).
It is the highest number of reported incidents => There is a corrosion problem.
Am I the only person to see the numbers?
Ew – Sorry but it seems to me that you are repeatedly responding to my hypothesis that Toyota has failed to live up to their philosophy with arguments that point out that … wait for it… Toyota has failed to live up to their philosophy. I may agree with all of your examples of the nefarious corporate tactics of Toyota. I may be even more inclined to do so because I feel each example you cite reinforces that hypothesis. Each and every example you have pointed to can be contrasted with a point in Toyoda’s official TPS system.
I’ll take your last one specifically: “…they postponed actually trying to fix it.” Of the 14 principles incorporating TPS, Principle 5 states: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. (Jeffery K. Liker, “The Toyota Way”). I agree completely with Bmaz’ statement that Toyota relied on their reputation to obscure and delay acknowledging their problems. And it’s possible that some aspects of regulatory capture came into play. I don’t think that changes the fact that by doing so Toyota violated their own philosophy. As to your allegations about Toyota’s treatment of suppliers, the same reference will demonstrate those are also philosophical violations.
Toyota may have become the huge corporate bully you seem to feel they are, but those traits still appear to me as coming more from american style management practice then anything out of Japan.
Okay, except what you call an “American management style” came out of Japan, and came at least partly because of the role of face in power relations in Japan.
Aside from that, your argument is airtight!
The problem I have with American cars is only partly due to their lack of quality for so many years. The rest has to do with their poor design, which assumes that all their customers are men who are at least 5ft10. If you’re short, you can’t drive some of those vehicles at all. (I sat behind the wheel of a company van. If I was close enough to floor the pedal – my standard test of ‘close enough’), I was literally up against the steering wheel, and that’s unsafe. It’s been like that on every US-maker car I’ve met, starting with a Mustang.)