If you look at any road, you will see some Toyota cars, this Toyota is one of the most popular cars in the world market. Although Japan has been involved in many scientific discoveries, the European-American influence has always been greater in the car market. However, Japan’s Toyota has captured the crown of the top car seller several times as a relatively new company, leaving behind the cars of the Bagha Bagha company in Germany, America, and the UK.
Toyota nomenclature:
‘Jidoka’, this Japanese word means automation in English and ‘automation’ in Bengali. The term was coined by a Japanese industrialist in the early 20th century. It is the name of a method that this industrialist started using to evaluate the performance and quality control of the machines in his weaving industry ‘Toyota Automatic Loom’. This industrialist’s name is Sakichi Toyoda’, yes, it is this Toyoda that the current automobile giant Toyota Motor Corporation is named after. Which occupied the top position in the ranking of the world’s largest car brands with a share of 10.5 percent in 2021.
The wheel is one of the inventions that contributed the most to advancing human civilization. The wheel imparted speed to the social system by transporting people and goods, which in turn, by the addition of machinery, advanced civilization at a whirlwind pace. In today’s era, it is impossible to think of alternatives to cars. Cars are the daily vehicle of people’s daily activities, around which one of the world’s most influential businesses, the automobile industry, is built. The Japanese brand Toyota, which once started its journey in the weaving industry, is strongly positioned in this industry.
Rise of Toyota:
In the 1930s, Japan’s textile industry was devastated by World War I, the devastating Kanto earthquake, and the global economic depression. On the other hand, when the railway communication system was disrupted due to the earthquake, there was a huge demand for vehicles including public transport in Japan, so the country started importing chassis for buses from Ford Motor Company.
Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro Toyoda, founded the Toyota Automotive Production Division in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. With zero experience in the car industry, he plans to start a car manufacturing facility. For this reason, they import Ford, Chevrolet, or Chrysler cars and look for a new model. With the combination of these 3, he appointed all the engineers working in the subsidiaries of various car factories of the country, General Motors, and other foreign companies in his company for the design and production of the car model.
Thus began the journey of today’s Toyota. As a result, in 1936, they launched their first ‘Model AA car in the market. The following year, in 1937, Toyota Motor was formed. That same year, Japan entered World War II as an Axis power, which spelled disaster for Toyota. Curbs in production, manufacture of war equipment, shortages of raw materials, and even the destruction of a factory in war.
It was not easy to rise from such a dire situation and subjugate the highest place in the automobile industry of the present world. Toyota has reached today’s position by utilizing the talent and honesty of the Japanese as well as special strategies and opportunities. Today’s discussion is about those strategies.
Korean War:
Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack, and Japanese industries, devastated by World War II, began to rebuild the country. Toyota then turned to truck building as a nation-builder. For a company as inexperienced in the automobile industry as Toyota, the Korean War came just in time as a boon. According to CNBC, Toyota began producing 650 cars a month to a few thousand due to the effects of the war.
The United States built military bases in various parts of Japan to participate in and closely monitor the Korean War. Because of this, there is a need for a large number of vehicles, especially trucks. Toyota needed this opportunity, at that time the company’s executive officers visited various car factories in America to learn about technology and management. Toyota received large orders from the US military during the Korean War, which gave the company a strong foundation.
Toyota Principles and Values:
Japanese culture, principles, and values are now world-famous. From Toyota’s management to its manufacturing strategy, those values are well practiced. It is wise to learn from every mistake, as Toyota’s policy states that learning is a lesson learned.
The company has emphasized teamwork as a guiding principle since its inception. When a problem arises, each team member feels the urge to team up and find a solution, feeling responsible. As a result, everyone is responsible for any mistake, so everyone shares in any success. This practice originally started on the factory floor and spread throughout the corporation.
Apart from this, another key factor in creating people’s trust in Toyota is the company’s ‘customer-wholesaler-manufacturer’ relationship. For Toyota, its success depends on maintaining the trust of wholesalers and customers. It should be a relationship that lasts.
The company’s optimistic policy of ‘tomorrow will be better than today’ is one of the reasons for Toyota’s long-term success. Here the mindset of employees is trained in such a way that they are motivated to do better by seeing all obstacles as challenges. They don’t believe in being satisfied with success, continuous improvement, and belief in making tomorrow better than today helps them improve. Which is the dominant attitude of kaizen to many.
Toyota has embraced multi-dimensional methods and principles, including the widely used kaizen philosophy of Japanese business, Sachiki Toyoda’s Jidoka method, and Genchi Zenbutsu, collectively known as the company’s Toyota Production System (TPS).
TPS:
TPS is an acronym for Toyota Production System, also referred to as the company’s motto. And associated with this is the principle of the founder Jidoka. When any abnormality occurs in the vehicle, it must be brought to a safe stop. Finding defects, and improving the device until the root problem is solved, reliable and safe is called Jidoka. This is seen as the first step in the case of TPS.
Next comes the Kaizen or continuous improvement phase. Through this, every work of production is continuously improved. The word kaizen is also a Japanese combination of the words kai (improvement) and zen (for good). The term kaizen generally means continuous improvement. Kaizen is closely followed in Toyota’s production system.
For example, a production job can be done in 10 minutes, Toyota tries to do it first in 8 minutes, then in 6 minutes, and so on. In this way, they try to find out all the mistakes, find out the root cause of the mistakes and correct them and bring the work to a perfect state by continuous improvement. TPS is therefore considered the key to Toyota’s success, which is remembered by most of the world’s automobile companies and other businesses.
Open Communication:
Outside of Japan, the company has at least 50 factories from which cars are sold in more than 170 countries. And more than 3 lakh workers are working in this work. Despite such huge operations and manpower, Toyota operates like a small town. The organization’s top executives believe that everyone is aware of everyone’s work.
Here free flow of information is ensured. From top executives to marginal workers, from buyers to wholesalers, or suppliers, information flows freely between all. Personal relationships are highly valued at Toyota, and this communication is a little more human than virtual.
An open environment is ensured here for employees to express their views, they are listened to carefully. The result is a web of relationships that its former executive vice-president Yoshimi Inaba calls a ‘nervous system’. Like the human body’s central nervous system, Toyota transmits information rapidly throughout the organization.
There are many other reasons behind the rise and success of Toyota. Among these, starting from the establishment of factories in the United States in the sixties, it has now become one of the largest foreign car sellers in the country. Toyota gained popularity primarily with small and affordable cars.
Due to the continuous rise in fuel prices, consumers are shifting towards cheaper cars from US and German cars. This is how Toyota has improved its models and engines. Different models have come out keeping in mind the environment, culture, and facilities of different regions, which has brought popularity to the company.
From Toyota SUVs to Lexus, the popularity of the brand in the developed world has greatly increased. No one has earned more trust from Asian consumers than Toyota for its combination of price and quality. And as a result, at least one Toyota Corolla, which was introduced in 1966, will be seen on the streets of Dhaka in every 10 cars. Since then, the 12th generation Corolla model has become the world’s best-selling car model with over 50 million units sold till 2021.