Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Tried to rep you, Goat, for the excellent post. But have to "spread the love" before I can rep you again.
So it's about 2003/2004 when Toyota "fell off the wagon" so to speak?
My old 87 Camry is still a peach. At 160K I had the head off for a head gasket leak (it was putting oil in the water, but no noticable water in the oil) and while I don't know for a fact this is the original engine, anyway the cylinder walls not only had no noticable ridge, they looked brand new with the cross-hatching as if it was rebuilt last week. When this car has had problems, they typically have not prevented the car from running, if not perfectly.
240K now, got 37 MPG out of the last tank of (no-ethanol) gasoline. Not too bad for a car I paid $3K for a few years ago (although I have done considerable work to it since)
I've seen quite a few of these posts from Toyota owners, so I thought I might give a little background as what you are experiencing is a result of recent changes Toyota has made to their manufacturing process in the pursuit of earning the number 1 auto manufacturer spot.
Toyota's success was built upon the quality and reliability of their cars. They developed a manufacturing and quality control system known as the "Toyota Way". It shares similar concepts to those of Six Sigma, but is an in house philosophy built around auto manufacturing.
In addition to constant quality checks and improvements, Toyota took a very unique path to parts sourcing. They specified a single source for each component and worked hand in hand with the plants to produce the parts. Toyota provided engineers, quality assurance personel, technology, etc. as well as paying for improvements to the plants manufacturing systems if needed. This created a very tight knit manufacturing process and ensured consistent quality.
As Toyota began to grow and expand, they realized they had the opportunity to eclipse Ford and perhaps even GM. The companies focus started to drift towards volume. About 7 years ago there was an incident at a brake pad manufacturing plant that shut down all of Toyota's production for two weeks. They realized that if they were going to shoot for the top spot, they would need to diversify their supplier network to ensure these types of shut downs wouldn't happen.
They went out and quickly added a secondary supplier for all components. The issue was that they did not put the same effort into these manufacturers in terms of QC and standards that they did with the others. Instead of Toyota engineers working directly with the plant and Toyota working with the owners or paying for upgrading the systems at the plant, Toyota simply sent schematics and said, build this part. This quickly led to subtle differences in parts across the same model line of cars based on where it was built and the source of the components. If you remember back to the accelerator pedal issue, there were two seperate versions of the pedal depending on where your car was built and one of them was deemed deficient, while the other was not.
So, when people say that recent Toyota products are not the same as older Toyota products, they are very correct. In pursuit of volume and achieving the number 1 spot, Toyota sacrificed quality in the parts sourcing which has led to a significant uptick in issues among Toyota vehicles. In light of all the issues Toyota has gone hard back to the "Toyota Way" and is instituting major reforms in their parts sourcing process from the secondary suppliers. Consider it growing pains.
Pretty good summary, but diversifying suppliers is only half of it. The other half is that Toyota increased volume despite limited engineering resources and decreased production time in order to beat GM in both volume and efficiency. I remember an article that came out around 2006/2007; Toyota boasted it was going to cut the time it took to build a vehicle from about 26 hours to an industry-leading 18 hours (raw material to finished product). Not only that, but Toyota had too few engineers to tackle all the new projects on the drawing board, including the new Camry, Tundra, and Venza that were all released around the same time. This is why you are seeing shoddy build quality and misaligned panels in many of these vehicles. The 2009 Corolla was originally supposed to be a MY 2008 vehicle, but they didn't have enough engineers on the project to finish it in time. And thirdly, Toyota's push for volume forced them to cut costs in order to add all these new vehicles to the lineup.
I've long been a member of automotive boards and can remember us ragging on Toyota 3+ years ago for basically announcing they were going to start cutting corners, and I remember the Toyota faithful being in complete denial because Toyota had such a perfect track record up to that point. GM basically taught everyone how NOT to run a company, yet Toyota brushed all lessons aside. I don't feel sorry for them in the least.
so now that we've analyzed & discussed Toyota's multifaceted problems, what's the fix for a company this size? Should they start spinning-off divisions like Prius, Scion, Lexus to becomes smaller and leaner? Move design/engineering & manufacturing back to Japan? It seems to me once a Fortune500 corp has the size & scope to dominate a market it's almost inevitable that we can predict their upcoming downfall.
What kills me is that I could really care less about Toyota's market share or if they build more cars than GM.
Building the most cars does not make you the best.
Building the best cars makes you the best.
Not only that, but if you are trying to dominate the market, a lot of that market is Homer Simpson types who can't tell the difference and want the automotive equivalent of Duff beer - mediocre, but cheap. Only idiots want to serve this segment of the market.
Toyota a number of years ago actually made public mention, like Mercedes, that they had overdone it on quality(cost too much money) and decided to cut the quality.
I think fairly stupid on the part of the both. Clearly both companies had built a rep and then decided to ride it out, but you can only ride that for so long.
I do a lot of work for the manufacturers and whenever we have a Toyota for comparison, the Toyota is always at the bottom of the pile in every aspect. I can also say you can tell the quality is lacking in the car itself, with cheap flimsy parts and materials.
Other manufacturers are coming on strong like Hyundai and Subaru, so Toyota can fall fast.
so now that we've analyzed & discussed Toyota's multifaceted problems, what's the fix for a company this size? Should they start spinning-off divisions like Prius, Scion, Lexus to becomes smaller and leaner? Move design/engineering & manufacturing back to Japan? It seems to me once a Fortune500 corp has the size & scope to dominate a market it's almost inevitable that we can predict their upcoming downfall.
First off, cut all the SUV/Crossover overlap. Why do both the Land Cruiser and Sequoia exist? They sell in such limited numbers and serve virtually the same purpose...the Land Cruiser is just outrageously priced. Make it a Lexus if need be and kill the GX...the GX is just a Land Cruiser rebadge anyway. Kill the 4Runner and LX while at it...neither of them sell in spectacular numbers. Kill the Venza...never was a need for it with the RAV4.
Kill Scion. It has flopped and is a waste of resources. None of the vehicles sell more than 2,000 per month...this brand sells worse than the outgoing Mercury brand.
What is the point of both the Avalon and ES? Kill one or the other. Avalon is getting its lunch eaten by the LaCrosse and Taurus. The ES still does fairly well for Lexus, so it would be the more likely candidate to stay.
There's eight easy nameplates to eliminate, plus an entire division. Put that recaptured funding toward better quality control and materials, a new Toyota-branded sports coupe, and improvements to the bread-and-butter Camry and Corolla.
RE: the "Toyota way" and sourcing parts ... I totally agree that when you have a company like Toyota that builds cars suddenly simply throw a schematic over the wall to a supplier and say "build it", things go wrong.
I work at Boeing, and that's what led to the downfall of the 787 production process. I know quite a few 777 engineers who quit the company or found other jobs because they were put in charge of pieces of the 787 and were immediately flummoxed by poor management and a "let the supplier build it" mentality.
RE: Scion, I agree that it has flopped in the US. The concept was cool - simply buy your car, no haggling. But all the cars are ugly and even the sporty car isn't very. They won't kill it off, though, because it is the Daihatsu in Japan, and that's also the marquee they sell it to Europeans. So, I highly doubt they will simply kill it off. Maybe refocus it back to Japan.
We have owned Toyotas since 1988, and we have been satisfied with their performance, quality, and efficiency. We have had minor problems, but nothing that would discourage us from buying another Toyota.
In relation to their recent disastorous plunge, I would agree with other posters that the Toyota management made the same mistake many American corportations have made when they attempted to increase their market share and outflank their competitors.
In order to gain the competitive edge and dominate the American market Toyota did cut corners and attempted to cut expenses by violating their own quality control standards and techniques.
The American corporate world has been cluttered with the carcases of companies who have gone down this destructive path. The path being produce sound and efficient products to gain the trust of the public----then when said trust is received,in an attempt to corner even more market share, cut corners and quality controls and throw caution to the wind in an attempt to zoom to number one while sacrificing your mission statements.
I trust Toyota will learn from their haste and desire to corner the market by devaluing their integrity and honor----if they dont they will become another casualty in the corporate greed column.
I have a Nissan and I will never buy another Toyota-it's the best SUV EVER
LOL, I have the tundra, but drive a frontier as my DD, surely your joking.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
