Causes of the Toyota Problems in the Fall of 2009

Causes of the Toyota Problems in the Fall of 2009

  • Submitted By: 08marchenr
  • Date Submitted: 11/24/2010 10:20 AM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 758
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 475

Causes of Toyota’s Current Problems


The background of Toyota, before the problems of the accelerator in the Lexus and Toyota branded cars, is that it is the worlds biggest car manufacturers and was known for its quality of cars. It started to grow intensively and in 2009 their desire for such growth affected the quality of theirs cars.

The Toyota car company found itself in severe problems in August 2009. When a 911 call was made from a driver, with three other passengers in the car, explaining that their car was quickly accelerating and not being able to stop. The problem had been recorded back for the past ten years. The problem is notoriously known as the Sudden Unintended Acceleration or S.U.A. This meant that the car would accelerate instead of slowing down when the acceleration pedal was released, causing sudden acceleration. Although, from 2000, they had an increase in the problem of S.U.A. The problems came along first when the floor-mat got stuck on the acceleration pedal. However, after several reviews into the S.U.A. problem, they decided that no recalls were needed.

Toyota had a goal of achieving 15% of the market share in car sales even though they are the biggest car manufacturer in the world, this meant that they had to increase their capacity by 50%. When this growth happened, many cars had the fault of S.U.A. and the president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, explained that the pace of which Toyota has grown had been to quick. He also explained that the founding principles of the business, first safety, second quality, and thirdly volume, had been mixed up. Toyota was blamed for being a danger to the public and traffic as they were selling cars that could accelerate out of control.

While growing, Toyota had to accumulate more parts for the increase in car production and so they also had to find more suppliers that were less familiar with the Toyota Quality Criteria and not only specialist companies as suppliers. This meant that they...

Similar Essays