Introduction

Toyota has demonstrated along its history to be a high tech car manufacturer company, leader in manufacturing reliable and high quality cars. The rest of the car manufacturers adopted Toyota’s production philosophy, the well-known TPS. The continuous rivalry with the rest of the car manufacturers and the aggressive growth strategy combined with a cost reduction plan caused Toyota to overlook quality issues which caused a very serious problem known as “The Accelerator Crisis” This crisis affected the company’s image and reputation and of course had an impact on its financials since they had to recall the defective cars. In this document it is intended to analyze and explore the reasons behind this Toyota’ accelerator crisis and how it was managed.

Case Analysis

Toyota had 14 principles in four sections that encompass a philosophy of continuous improvement. These sections, or groupings, refer to: long-term vision, process improvement, root-cause analysis & self-criticism, and developing the people. Toyota was so successful in implementing them that these best practices became a philosophy that others wanted to emulate. It is surprising that Toyota had to face a crisis over its lack of quality.
In determining the main cause for this crisis, we can identify several items such as change of the management staff, from family to a professional team, oriented towards growth and increasing sales volumes. The original Toyota values got mixed-up, prioritizing volume over safety and quality. Other factors such as the relentless push towards reducing costs and lean production contributed to this crisis.
When the users started reporting claims about defective engines and afterwards, pedals, Toyota’s management first reaction was to deny the issue blaming it on the bad maintenance behavior of the drivers/customers. This negative response was contrary to