Toyota's Unintended Decceleration

It would be remiss of anyone interested in Quality Management Systems, to not have a long hard look at how the most titanic of Quality Management Organisations attempted to skip (or ignore depending on whom you ask) at least one step and fell harder than almost any other global manufacturer in recent memory... Yes. It's Toyota.

As I've said previsouly, Quality is measured by a products ability to meet expectations. People's expectations can often make a product of overall average quality, appear to be high in quality. Toyota trade on a reputation of high reliability, and accordingly, that is what a typical Toyota customer would expect. As long as that is what Toyota provides, their customers will view their products to be of high quality.

Whilst they spent a lot of time and money focusing on reliability, which became their stock in trade, other aspects of their products where hardly ground breaking or even admirable by automotive standards. Their interior plastics are rather ordinary, their handling is generally pretty abysmal, and (we'll keep Lexus aside for the moment) comfort is not much better than budget competitors. Nonetheless, they were briefly the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, and still today, retain a number of eager supporters. The most vocal of those supporters would cite the Prius as a reason for worship, and fair enough too. The Prius is an important milestone in the modernisation of personal transport. A shame then, that the latest generation Prius was also subjected to a recent global recall.

So one could assume, considering their success, that they [Toyota] had a strong grip on quality control and management thereof, within their corporate structure. That is until their recent cataclysmic fall from grace where, after customers had died from alleged unintended acceleration, the industrial giant tied itself in knots attempting to deflect blame. The final result was a recall of over 8 million vehicles globally. The first scapegoat was an assumption that floor mats were wedging the throttle assembly to the floor, resulting in a maintenance recall which trimmed the offending throttle pedals and floor mats secured to the seat frame with cable ties. No really.

Next was CTS, an American Manufacturer, which had reliably served Toyota for many years, including the manufacture and supply of throttle assemblies. Despite receiving awards for the Quality of their products, CTS was given a massive hospital pass by their longtime [satisfied] customer, even though most reported cases of unintended acceleration were related to vehicles not even fitted with CTS manufactured throttle assemblies. Then came the rather emotive silence or "I-don't-know" responses from Toyota US President of Sales and member of Toyota's Board of directors, Jim Lentz, in response to questioning during Congressional hearings.

Finally, Toyota admitted that Quality levels had not been maintained during their exponential growth over the last decade.So where did Toyota fail?

Did they organise their data? Running such a mammoth organisation would be a proportionately mammoth task and you would have to assume that they [Toyota] had access to and awareness of all manner of reliability data, including customer complaints regarding unintended acceleration. Reports had, after all, been coming in (allegedly) since 1997.

They would no doubt have analysed every little bit of information they could, to try and maintain their reputation for reliability.

Improvement is where they have failed. The ability to go AND stop are two of the most fundamental operations of their core product. It wasn’t until a family tragically perished whilst on the phone to Emergency Services, that Toyota started grasping at straws with respect to a attributing a cause.

So what about repeat? Well they got that part right, because they have consistently done the wrong thing in successive instances, now also having recalled vehicles for everything from corroding cross members to ineffective Dynamic Stability Control systems.

Toyota is a prime example of outgrowing your Quality Management System. When initial reports where received and subsequent attempts failed to resolve the issue, their very process to seek out the problem should have come under review.

Now, they have diminished their reputation for reliability, are having to address a financial costs that will no doubt extend into seven figures and still have no definitive answer as to what causes unintended acceleration.

Oh, and they also now have a “Special Committee for Global Quality”.
Makes you wonder what they were doing beforehand. Perhaps they are starting to get the hang of that elusive “improvement” word. Reuters.com has the minutes from Toyota’s new special committee which really just details measures which they should already have had in place. You can read it for yourself right HERE

Clearly, not being able to stop a vehicle is the antithesis to what is expected of a quality vehicle. Then again, it does put the auto in automobile.

What is Quality and how do I get some?

So I guess I should start with explaining the definition of Quality!

It's not as easy to define as one might think. Even the presence of quality is a difficult concept to put your finger on. Quality relates to the ability of a product or characteristic to meet an expected standard, good or bad. High quality is expected, but is only conspicuous in its absence, to folks whom have previous experience with the good.

In order to manage quality, my banner pretty much sums up the whole process. Organise, Analyse, Improve, Repeat. It's a simple map that only goes from left to right. You can't start in the middle. You can't go backwards, and none of the steps can survive on their own.

Organise:
Have all of your relevant data at hand. This includes both internal and external information relating to your business and products. From design to application, every piece of information could come in handy, so have it where you can get it, quickly and easily.

Analyse:
Companies are usually run at break neck speed, so piecemeal ideas are often implemented in-situ, just to get by at the time. Have a look at everything you do and see if it is still relevant to your current business. Compare how much revenue is being generated or lost by what you do every day and don't forget to put a dollar value on hours saved by specific tools or external services.

Improve:
Now you have a general idea of what to do next. If this is the first time around, you can find a surprising amount of savings in your internal business, by culling a large number of small things.

Repeat!
If it is your second time around, you should find yourself with a bit more cash flow (and time!) to improve your actual external business. Organise your new set of data (that's basically the olde data with all the unnecessary flotsam trimmed off). Analyse what your biggest successes AND failures have been. Improve them with the freshly available time and capital.

Congratulations. You have just created a culture of Quality Management!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Quality!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the first of many posts where I discuss the wonderful world of Quality, and more specifically, Quality Management. Unless you came here on purpose, chances are you just let out a huge yawn. There is still a culture of viewing Quality Management as a resource heavy pain in the backside, often pursued to get a tick in the box. With any luck , I'll be able to convince you otherwise as I peruse the interwebs for stories of epic wins and failures, as well as some personal commentary and tips, on how Quality Managment can help your company grow with out falling flat on it's face!