Are Cost-cutting Measures Damaging Toyota’s Culture of Quality?

Toyota quality in question

Another recall for Toyota. Now over 1.7 million vehicles world-wide including some Lexus models are being recalled for defective fuel devices or other faulty parts. What is happening to Toyota quality?

It all goes back to knowing what’s core to your culture and never compromising on it. Every organization must define what values must be shared by everyone in the organization. These are the values that are never compromised. These are the values that each employee takes pride in and wants to live more effectively each and every day. You don’t want a lot of values–that important– so that there’s no excuses. These few values must be clearly understood. So, for example with Toyota, the focus should always be about quality. Quality should be the blood that runs through the veins of all who work for the company. Nothing moves quality second to anything.

So why do companies mess this up? It’s often a problem of not integrating the value throughout every aspect of the company. It’s about aligning all practices with the core principle. In the case of Toyota, as reported in the Wall Street Journal,

“Toyota has been using more common parts in its vehicles” in order to cut costs, said Koji Endo, an auto analyst at Tokyo-based independent auto industry boutique Advanced Research Japan.

Toyota should know better. The suppliers they use and the materials they buy must meet their high standards for quality. Anything less should not be qualified to be in a Toyota product–from the car to the key chain.

The article says Toyota has been taking actions to prevent recalls, such better reporting of safety issues, assigning engineers to focus on quality issues, and spot-checking vehicles for potential problems before launch. But maybe that’s just not comprehensive enough.

Every aspect of the company’s internal practices from how the organization is structured, how work is designed, systems for doing one’s work, hiring practices, orientation, training, performance management, internal communications and technology must reinforce the focus on quality.

And every aspect of the company’s external practices including its suppliers, vendors and partners must be screened to set quality as the number one requirement.

Also, the image the company projects should always be about quality. When I look at the Toyota website, I don’t see a dominant focus on quality. There seems to be a greater focus on selling more cars. Maybe the focus on growth has become more important. Where is Toyota quality?

If quality is the core value that captures the core essence of what Toyota is all about, then they must make it core to all they do. Costs or any other value cannot be a higher value than quality.

Successful organizations understand that they must define their core culture–the principles that are central to who they are that are never compromised. And employees must practice those few principles in everything that they do.  That consistency is what makes organizations great.