Reference no: EM133181166

Case study: Quality Crisis

Worldwide, the Toyota brand name has been a symbol of quality. Toyota's focus on Kaizen (the Japanese term meaning "continuous improvement") helped Toyota become the number one seller of automobiles in the world, but from the negative side the continuous pressure over the employee to introduce improvements ( Big part of their objectives and base of employees' appraisal) which leads to low employees' morale, depression, increase employee' burnout which in turn raise the  turnover rate to  exceed 25% in the year 2014 and expected to increase by increasing rate. The continuous pressure of managers towards more improvements to increase their personal achievements makes things worse among employees, even they tried to reach top management to reduce that pressure, but their request was rejected with negative criticism as it is against the heritage of Toyota the founder of TQM and Kaizen approaches. One senior top management declare in a top management meeting that he thinks that employee's burnout phenomena starts to appear explicitly due to the increase of turnover rate, but he could not be able to detect the real reasons behind this phenomenon.

In light of Toyota's commitment to quality, it was shocking when Toyota announced a massive recall of many of its vehicles in early 2010. On January 21, 2010, Toyota stated that it would recall approximately 2.3 million vehicles to correct sticking accelerator pedals, and, on top of that, approximately 4.2 million vehicles would have an ongoing recall for a floor mat pedal entrapment issue. By late February 2010, Toyota had recalled "about 8.5 million vehicles for problems related to gas pedals and brakes," according to CNN. Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan estimated that the recall cost Toyota $2 billion. Moreover, the way Toyota managed the crisis was even worse than the financial consequences. The president of the company, Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota's founder, did not appear publicly for two weeks after the recall announcement. When he did appear, Toyoda took the path of minimizing the problem, citing a software issue, rather than a defect, as the source of the pedal problems. Some uncertainty remains as to whether the problems originated in Toyota plants in America or whether the problem can be traced to designers in Japan. Kingston asserted that Toyota's failure to be forthcoming on critical safety issues has put "the trust of its customers worldwide" in jeopardy. Where did Toyota go wrong? How did the symbol of quality become tarnished? Some contend that cultural factors contributed to Toyota's current crisis.

How Japanese Culture Influenced Toyota

In his Wall Street Journal article, Kingston explained the cultural roots of Toyota's woes. He indicated that "a culture of deference" in Japanese firms "makes it hard for those lower in the hierarchy to question their superiors or inform them about problems." In addition, the Japanese tend to focus on the consensus, which can make it difficult "to challenge what has been decided or designed." In Japan, Kingston noted that "employees' identities are closely tied to their company's image and loyalty to the firm overrides concerns about consumers 

From your understanding of the case answer the following questions:

Question Three  

Identify the strengths and weakness that Toyota company holds, explaining what is the main reasons behind the quality crisis?

Question Four  

Shareholders and investor are pressuring the top management of Toyota to do some urgent transformation plan to enhance the company image and controlling the quality issue, the company decided to replace the following positions to solve the problems:

• Director of production
• Director of marketing
• Director of HR

Based on your understanding of the case and MBTIs, identify a personality type for each job in order to fit with the situation ,Justify your choices?