Company of Choice: TOYOTA

In 1933 company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda. In 1934 department of Toyota industries
manufactured first product the product called Type A engine and its first passenger car AA in
1936. Toyota bought some other companies also and own and operates Lexus, Scion, Daihatsu
and Hino Motors and shareholdings in Fuji heavy industry, Isuzu, Yamaha, and Mitsubishi
Aircraft Corporation. All these and some other in total include around 522 subsidiaries.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi and in Tokyo. Instead of automobile Toyota also
provides financial services through its division Toyota Financial Services and also builds robots
for different industries. Toyota Motor Corporation its financial services and Toyota Industries all
together form the bulk of the Toyota Group and one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

Toyota is worldwide famous and well-known company because of their high-quality

manufactured cars, Toyota is doing very well and growing very fast globally they have their
operations, manufacturing facilities and valuable loyal customers all over the world. The new
technology Hybird in Toyota cars gave a new pride to Toyota and the sales of Toyota going up
day by day. In last few years Toyota became number one in automotive industry and became a
number one in mostly selling their cars worldwide. Below chart shows the figures of
manufactured cars in 2008 and the chart is showing other companies’ production also.

Toyota products were in high demand worldwide and they had a time when they felt they might
not be able to meet the demand of customers but they were selling as normal routine and increase
the production with huge volumes and increase the manufacturing speed. Contacted and started
working with more suppliers for different parts which they are use to buy from different
suppliers. Toyota Executives and Mr. Akio Toyoda had a strong feeling that working with new
and more suppliers might give a bad impact for their quality and they might not be able to
control well. They had very busy and high demand for their cars instead of finding good solution
to cope this situation they didn’t go for more alternatives like booking, reservation for cars
instead of doing this they gave focus on rapid expansion. Lean production system, supply chain
management and the concept of product life cycle which is well followed by Toyota helped
Toyota to reach the highest level in automotive industry. Other inspirations within organization
also make a big contribution like an internal blog, rewards, hold creativity and ideology sessions,
give positive feedback and respond to suggestions, celebrate on success, encourage risks &
celebrate failures too, use of mind maps, mix up work teams, understand consumer behavior and
innovation links to Jobs.

In short Toyota is doing well in the market and going at the highest level of their successes.
Enjoying being number one in the automotive industry, ranks number one in highest units selling
cars worldwide. Regularly struggles and keeps trying bringing innovation to their products
helped them to be number one innovative company in the world.

Globalization Effort
The global auto industry is a key sector of the economy for every major country in the world. A
huge invests in research, development and production result in gaining high industry
performance. The high competition of key players in automotive include; BMW, FIAT, Ford,
General Motor, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Peugeot Citroen, Toyota, Renault, Volkswagen,
Hyundai and Daimler. Toyota Motor Corporation has become one of the most successful
companies in the world today. In 2010, Toyota was ranked number 5 of the world’s largest
corporations and number 11 of the best global brands. It is also considered as the most profitable
organization of automobile. For almost 15 years J.D Power and other research firms have
consistently rated Toyota and its luxury line, Lexus, among the top automotive brand. Over 50
years automotive operation worldwide and its launched the world first commercial hybrid car,
Prius, enhance Toyota more strengthen and gaining high competitive advantage over the rivals in
term of its reputation and reliability, initial quality, and long-term durability (J.D Power, 2010;
Stewart and Raman, 2007).In June 1995, Toyota announced the 'New Global Business Plan,'
aimed at advancing localization (of production) and increasing imports (through collaboration
with foreign automobile companies) over a three-year period. A major objective of this plan was
to increase Toyota's offshore production capacity to 2 million units by 1998. As part of the
localization efforts, Toyota focused on increasing overseas production significantly by
establishing new plants and expanding the capacity of the existing plants. Apart from this short-
term global business plan, Toyota also came up with a long-term global business vision in June
1996, named the 'Global Vision 2005.' The major components of "Global Vision 2005"were,
asserting a competitive edge in technology and accelerating globalization, while sustaining
market leadership in Japan, by reclaiming its above 40% market share. In April 2002, Toyota
announced another corporate strategy to boost its globalization efforts. This initiative, termed the
'2010 Global Vision' was aimed at achieving a 15% market share (from the prevailing 10%) of
the global automobile market by early 2010, exceeding the 14.2% market share held by the
leader GM. There are many examples of how Toyota’s ‘global localization’ strategy became
manifest. In each of the three globalization programs from 1995 to 2010, localization of
production became more and more of an issue. Through the approach of locating manufacturing
facilities in or close to markets, Toyota was able to become more adaptive to local needs and
flexible in its approach to products. Changes were made to the Lexus product in the US that
enabled it to serve that market more effectively, while a new small car (Yaris) was developed
specifically for the European market. Toyota restructured its profit structure into three profit
bases: Japan, North America and Europe in a move to regionalize its core activities. Its
European headquarters was given more autonomy, which allowed it to strengthen its sales
network and expand local manufacturing capacity, cutting costs and increasing production
volumes. The potential downside of localization, fragmentation and a loss of global identity,
appear to have been avoided by Toyota. Its executives make a point of visiting its local
manufacturing plants when they are able to and a large marketing outlay helps to maintain
relations with the corporate ‘parent’. Toyota’s worldwide operations, identifying its presence in
26 different countries and such broad coverage of activities in eight different geographic regions
seems to qualify Toyota as a global company.