In today automobiles industry, Toyota is well-known not only in Asia but also all over the world. Established seven decades ago, we could say that Toyota brand has been appeared most of countries all over the world, and they have a big influence on automobiles industry. Beside the success of Toyota through decades, Toyota has faced with many obstacle that affect strongly on its reputation in a few years back. Overview Toyota was found by Sakichi Toyoda. It traces the company’s development through 1937, when Toyota Motor Co. Ltd was established with the mission is to make maximum long-term profits for its stockholders and be a good corporate citizen. In 1950, a Toyota motor sale Co. , Ltd was built because the company faces a financial crisis. After thirty years, Toyota Motor Co. , Ltd and Toyota motor sale Co. , Ltd are merged into Toyota Motor Corporation, 1982. The director of Toyota Corporation is Mr. Fujio Cho. Today, Toyota is the world’s second or third largest automobiles manufacturer in both unit sales and in net sales, and the No. 1 seller of retail vehicles in the US.
It produces over 5. 5 million vehicles per year. Toyota Motor Vietnam (TMV) was established in 1995 and official opening in October 1996. President is Mr. Akito Tachibana. Vietnam Toyota’s product includes Hiace, Camry, Corolla Altis, Innova, Vios and Fortuner (Locally-produced models)and Land Cruiser, Hilux (Imported models), with a production capacity of 20,000 vehicles/year. TMV is possessed by three associates: Toyota Motor Corporation (70%), Vietnam Engine and Agricultural Machinery Corporation – VEAM (20%), KUO Singapore Pte. Ltd (10%). Fact issues The first root problem which Toyota Vietnam encounters is business ethics. TMV is irresponsible in securing the customers’ safety. Although, during production process, the company detected three seriously technical flaws which are involved in safety standard contents, they still passed the decision to launch faulty cars to the market. At the time 2006- 2011, Innova and Fortuner cars were attracting lots of demands by convenient designs, suitable price.
It led TMV’s sale productivity last year up to 31,000 cars for Innova series that occupied 1/3 market share in Vietnam, according to bbc. co. uk/Vietnamese- article in 8th April 12, 2011. That means TMV get lots of profit from those attracted products; but users’ lives are threatening when driving. Moreover, the problem is just exposed to public by an employee who discontented with the irresponsibility of company. It leads the authorities entering into the investigations. The company brand was broken down; and TMV started losing the customers’ loyalty.
However, in a press conference, Mr. Tadashi Yoshida- production director of TMV affirmed that “if there are any accidents which are defined relating to those technical faults by authorities, TMV will take the responsibility. ” That means the rights of customers aren’t respected; the safety of thousands of consumers are not concentrated on. The second root problem which Toyota Vietnam is facing is human. In an organization, the human factor is the core in whole processes from production to management. Their power and contribution are invaluable to the growth of company.
However, TMV is losing themselves far away their working philosophy “To employees, we always record and respect each individual’s efforts and contribution in our success. ” In the case thousands faulty cars recently, Le Van Tach-an engineer of TMV find out serious faults which will affect to users’ safety, and send suggestion to stop manufacturing and recall the faulty cars to fix immediately. But, the managers don’t heed feedbacks, ideas, or opinions to solve problems effectively. They tend to ignore Mr. Tach many times, and have arbitrary decisions.
That means employees contributions in TMV success aren’t focus. Therefore, the company has to face heavy criticisms. Solution Toyota cooperation offers several handling there problem including the external and the internal problems. Firstly, Toyota has some solution for external issue. To customers, the strategy carry the title “Customer first” which includes creating a complaint center for receiving, handling any customers’ complaints and solving problem with a good and friendly attitude. In addition, the complaint center also handles the employees’ suggestion.
Further more, they could organize some corporate social responsibility programs to gain back their reputation and create a new responsibility image in community’s heart. Besides, they also need to do promotion to attract more customers. To employees, they should always record and respect each individual’s efforts and contribution in our success. This human-being business view point has made our active contributions for the society as the good citizen at the local community with 3 important targets: Customer’s satisfaction; Active contributions to Vietnam’s automobile industry and to Vietnam society.
Secondly, Toyota has a strategy to solve the internal problem. In human resources strategy, Toyota divided into eight areas such as rewards and recognition, training, hiring, the performance management process, corporate culture, leadership development and succession, retention, risk assessment. However, basing on the published article, we can understand that TMV only need to execute in some fields include rewards and recognition, training, and the performance management process. The purpose of any corporate reward process is to encourage and incent the right behaviors and to discourage the negative ones.
It’s important for the reward process to incent the gathering of information about problems. It’s equally important to reward employees who are successful in getting executives to take immediate action on negative information. Toyota can use rewards and recognition for the ones who can contribute the ideas of Cost-cutting, for example. Secondly, for training process, Toyota is famous for its four-step cycle — plan/do/check/act — but clearly the training among managers now needs to focus more on the last two.
In addition, in an environment where safety is paramount, everyone should have been trained on the symptoms of “groupthink” and how to avoid the excess discounting or ignoring of negative external safety information. Finally, Performance management processes identify problem behaviors before they get out of hand, measure responsiveness to negative information, report groupthink type errors. Toyota doing so well, maybe for the time by time the strategy out of dates so retention and improving the current customers’ needs. Implementation The implementation of the strategy of Toyota should follow the ime illustrated by the the chart below. Conclusion General speaking, Toyota’s problems are the lessons for all of corporations in automobiles industry in particular and for all corporations in the world in general.
Through those issues, we can conclude with three lessons. Firstly, the companies should not neglect the quality control, even though a famous brand. Secondly, they should not accelerate the market share without focusing on product quality control. Finally, they should build and protect the essence of the brand which is the strength of the brand, which is the product quality in the case of Toyota.
Work cited
http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/2011/04/110408_toyotavietnam_recall.shtml
http://www.tinmoi.vn/6-ldquochieurdquo-Toyota-dung-de-doi-pho-voi-con-loc-trieu-hoi-xe-04177312.html
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