Why the big freak-out about Toyota?

Think about it! The current Toyota story tells us much more about U.S. manufacturers and their market mindset than about Toyota Motors!

Toyota manufacturers automobiles for a profit. In part at least, they adopted many of the ideas put forth by Deming, and in combination with their cultural legacy and the blatant stupidity of their competitors, they have managed to do much better than the “Big Three” in the U.S. Now if U.S. manufacturers had more brains than guile, they would be grateful to Toyota for being a great competitor, and would take advantage of that to make their products even better, but that is not what is going on.

First consider this…

• “Doing Deming” does not make an organization perfect, nor does it produce perfect products.
• Irrespective of who manufactures them, modern automobiles are incredibly complex and no matter how carefully designed and built, all have flaws.
• If perfection were the criteria for building and selling automobiles, we would have no automobiles.
• When a flaw is discovered in a product, the producer must make an economic decision regarding how to deal with the problem.

In the current situation, at least, two flaws have come to the attention of the public: rare instances in which the gas pedal sticks, and brake fade on bumpy roads when a hybrid braking control system is apportioning engine braking (energy recovery) and friction braking.
Both flaws were revealed to be rare events.

As Monday morning quarterbacks, we cannot know what was going on at Toyota in their assessment of the problems. Brake fade was probably inherent in the transition process between engine and friction braking. The operator solution was explained as “press harder on the brake”. Evidently, the sticking problem was so rare that systematic analysis was difficult but well underway. I am guessing that the sticking question was still at the stage of determining whether or not a problem even existed.

Should Toyota have stopped the production line and sales way back when the first evidence of these problems appeared? Maybe and maybe not.

I have participated in many, many, QA vs. Engineering vs. Marketing debates in which QA calls for stopping the line and Engineering says this is the best we can do given technology and timing, and Marketing says “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead”. The debate is rarely a simple “right vs. wrong”. It is always economic. If this were not so, no products would ever reach the market. Perfection is never an option.

In studying the current Toyota freak-out, I looked up the recent history of outstanding recalls for automobiles manufactured in the U.S. The number of vehicles affected in 2003 was just under 20 million. The safety impact of many of the recall items was as great. To the best of my knowledge, these recalls received little or no media attention.

The most important part of the story of the Toyota freak-out, has not been the problems themselves, but the fact that certain vested interests have managed to raise the level of speculation and criticism to a fever pitch in hopes of enhancing the competitive position of U.S. automakers without requiring them do anything by way of improvement in the products they build and sell.

Has Toyota become the target of a smear campaign? I would say obviously YES.

Do Toyota products have flaws? The harder you look, the more you will find—guaranteed! This will be true of any product.

Were the economic decisions made by Toyota, sound? They were as they always are, judgment calls, but once the smear campaign was well underway, Toyota decided to do what US automakers never do. They owned up to the problems, apologized to their customers, stopped the line and sales, engineered fixes, instituted a massive recall, and began a process of self-criticism with the aim to improve. That in itself, is a Toyota difference that matters.

Should Toyota try to do better? Duh!

“Doing Deming” does not and cannot, make an organization or its products perfect. In the final analysis, Toyota is just another for profit automobile manufacturer, albeit one that, even in the current crisis, continues to stand head-and-shoulders above their U.S. competition.