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Toyota Quality Issues

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Submitted By randykenepp
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Quality Issues with Toyota Motor Vehicles

Randy Kenepp
821 Vickie Drive
Del City, OK 73115
Phone: 405-473-7998
Email: rkenepp@gmail.com
Managing Quality - BSOP 588
Professor: Richard Sheng

October 19, 2014

I. Introduction: Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is a motor vehicle and production business. TMC is headquartered in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. TMC was founded August 28, 1937 by Kiichira Toyoda. Kiichira Toyoda’s son Akio Toyoda is the current President of the company. The company was originally a division of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Company founded by Kiichira’s father, Sakichi Toyoda. World War II halted many of the company’s initial manufacturing, but by 1950, Toyota reopened production facilities. In the 1960s and 1970s, TMC began rapidly exporting automobiles to foreign markets (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, paragraph 4). TMC has continued to grow and has manufacturing plants and distribution channels setup in many countries. As of May 2014, TMC has a 397.05 billion yen, or 3.69 billion dollars, of capital. As of March 31, 2014, TMC has 338,875 employees.
TMC has had a long standing reputation for quality. TMC’s quality philosophy is stated on their website, Toyota-Global.com (2005), “In June 1961, TMC decided to adopt the system of Total Quality Control (TQC) to modernize management operations. To realize TQC, all employees in Toyota were required to ‘regard the next processes (on the production line) as their customers and provide them with the required amount and quality of goods and services on a timely basis.’ Individual quality control circles studied ways of determining the cause of defects when they occurred and devised countermeasures to prevent reoccurrence. In addition, quality control teams were formed at all levels to promote company-wide participation” (Quality, 2005).
II. Problem Statement:
Due to a lack in

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