The safety recalls that Toyota had in the year 2010 marked the start of major long-term problems for the company. Despite the fact the faulty gas pedal issue was an isolated case, it was highly publicized considering the fact there were a number of deaths involved. It is vital to note that Toyota had all along been to be a very innovative company with effective operations management practices. Many people had built high trust in the products of Toyota over time and the company enjoyed huge marketplace share and big sales. In fact, it rose to become the world’s largest automobile company. Based on this earlier streak of good performance, Toyota always got awards and rewards for being a very efficient and effective company.
Therefore, the 2010 incident was an issue of big surprise to many people within the automobile industry and this informed the reason for it being major news. Since the whole world received this bad news and the existence of the deaths, it is expected that the incident marked the start of problems for Toyota considering the changed perception within the minds of players in the marketplace.
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Safety issues in the automobile industry are addressed by the quality management of a given company. Therefore, much of the blame was directed to the poor quality management at the company that may have failed to detect and correct the issue of faulty gas pedal.
It is true that the operations strategy and the competitive priorities have evolved significantly for the past 100 years, in the automotive industry. This industry has greatly changed and grown bigger than it was many years ago. It is vital to observe the fact that the goal of operations strategy is always to create effective linkage between the business approach and the functions done in the company. Operations strategy normally focuses on the specific capabilities present in a company with an aim of capitalizing on them to achieve success in terms of high business performance. Notably, 100 years ago, all operations in the automobile companies used to be under one roof. However, the situation has really evolved and now the supplies to companies are being out-sourced. Moreover, the purchase of inputs is made through other companies. The aim of this new style of carrying out operations is to save money through cost cuts.
Furthermore, the aspect of safety has also greatly evolved in the automobile industry. With increased concerns over the safety in this industry, the OSHA legislation was introduced to guide training in this area. Technology now rules everything in this industry. It has evolved with new and more effective computer software as well as applications being used by the automobile companies.
The positive tradeoffs, which are associated with outsourcing the functions of production in automobile industry, include low procurement costs. The cost of production is also significantly lowered and there is achievement of highly responsive producers. Furthermore, there is some level of specialization through the outsourcing of the production functions, which is very good and suitable for maintenance of high quality and safe products as organizations focus on their area of expertise.
There are also negative tradeoffs of outsourcing the functions of production, which include many possible risks in terms of poor quality and unsafe cars being produced. With outsourced production functions, the automobile company loses control over quality and safety of its products.
Some of the specific quality systems that Toyota should have followed in order to avoid this incidence include Total Quality Management, ISO 9000 standards, ISO 14000 standards and Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Moreover, the company should have considered the Six Sigma quality management approach. Six Sigma has the benefit of using quantitative and data-driven quality improvement techniques.
