Question

Question: Evaluate the statement in the case made by Toru Sakuragi that “. . . Toyota has been caught between a need to cut costs to overcome the strong yen and the need to improve quality to prevent recalls,” and that “they are now pursuing both strategies, but they are essentially at odds with one another.” Is this a realistic strategy? Do you have suggestions for how the strategy might be improved?

Short answer

Answer

Quality improvement seeks to increase efficiency while also meeting the demands of consumers.

Step-by-step solution

Quality improvement

The quality improvement relates to the continuous as well as collaborative activities of everyone in an organization to enhance all of it, particularly its manufacturing process. It is a methodical technique for eliminating or reducing rework, wastage, as well as losses in the manufacturing system. The endeavors to increase the standard of performance of critical steps, and procedures, as well as results in service, providers are referred to as improving quality.

This realistic strategy. The suggestions, as well as the strategy, might be improved

It is not a realistic strategy, as well as pursuing it may potentially undermine all attempts to increase total quality. Furthermore, the many steps that the corporation conducted to enhance the quality condition were a significant investment for the organization. The deployment of quality groups, a modern database framework, recruited technicians, a quality new general manager, and so on resulted in a large expenditure for the firm, which contradicts Mr. Sakuragi's claims.

Also, nothing in the study case pertains the circumstance to a cost-cutting solution; however, the case study pertains to Toyota making little attempt to modify their assembly line procedure, implying that the corporation does not believe they have problems with their production division as well as instead views this as a merchandise design problem rather than quality as well as production problem; rather, they concentrate their time and effort on tightly monitoring the quality of work in improvements as well as of the ultimate item.

The firm's initiatives can be regarded as continual enhancement strategies because they resulted in advantages in terms of the total reliability of the good or service as well as the services provided by the organization; additionally, "Toyota asserts it has discovered no defective products as well as safety concerns with fresh car models that have undertaken improved inspections before their prelaunch in the global market, proving that their dilemma may be associated with consumer perspective or even a loss of customer knowledge."

Toyota has included an optimistic and forward-thinking approach. The Japanese company aims to minimize the number of recalls they have to handle while also lowering expenses to enhance their quality. Then they anticipate seeing the costs rise again as a result of the quality enhancement.