TOKYO: After four tumultuous years book-ended by an unprecedented recall crisis and a return to the top of the global auto industry, Akio Toyoda is refashioning Toyota Motor Corp. into a leaner company that is attempting to be more imbued with the venture spirit of founder Kiichiro Toyoda, his grandfather.
Toyota’s president said in an interview with the Associated Press he is putting new auto plants on hold for three years and reshaping the automaker’s structure to give more autonomy to regional divisions and foreign executives.
During his four years at Toyota’s helm, Toyoda has learned the hard way the costs of blindly pursuing growth, a strategy inherited from his predecessor that he ruefully acknowledges got him slammed by a cascade of recalls.
The spectacular recall debacle in the United States, which began in 2009 and involved millions of vehicles, got him grilled at U.S. congressional hearings over safety, but also rallied American dealers to his side. Toyoda wept openly during one emotional show of support from Toyota dealers in the United States. Then in 2011, an earthquake and tsunami in Japan wiped out auto suppliers and Toyota’s vehicle production plunged. Yet the automaker’s comeback has been stunning. It sold a record 9.75 million vehicles last year, regaining the crown of world’s No. 1 automaker from General Motors Co.
Despite the turnaround, caution lingers. Whatever growth “a reborn” Toyota pursues must be “sustainable,” Toyoda, 56, said.
“We have to keep improving, getting better and better, not taking for granted that we have recovered,” he said.
He was speaking after announcing an overhaul of management that was the clearest statement yet of his vision to create a more nimble, transparent and globally minded company to prevent any recurrence of the mistakes of recent years.
Toyoda said the company won’t build any new auto plants through 2015 to keep fixed costs down despite burgeoning sales and what he feels are good prospects for global auto growth. Plants already under way will still be completed.
He said that reflects a decision to focus on growing leaner and making better use of what it already has to boost profitability, not just sales.
“There are some plants that are busy, and some plants that aren’t so busy,” Toyoda said. It plans to be more flexible about shipping cars from one nation to another, such as the Yaris from Europe to the United States, to improve factory efficiency.
Among the key leadership moves announced was the appointment of American Mark Hogan, an independent consultant and former GM group vice president, as a board director — the first time in Toyota’s 76-year history it is appointing board members from outside the company.
Toyota also promoted four non-Japanese managers to oversee regional divisions, which will become more autonomous, including James Lentz, an American who already leads Toyota Motor Sales in the United States, to head the North American region. Steve St. Angelo, another American, will lead Latin American operations and South African Johan van Zyl will lead the African region.
Toyoda said Hogan was someone he trusted since they worked together more than a decade ago at NUMMI, or New United Motor Manufacturing, a California auto plant that was jointly run by Toyota and GM.
Toyota collapsed into red ink with the 2008 global financial crisis, and then it got hit with one recall after another, spanning defects in floor mats, gas pedals and brakes, resulting in more than 14 million vehicles being recalled, mostly in the United States.