It’s fairly clear that the Toyota Prius braking system problems are software related and to do with the interaction between the ABS and the regenerative system that recovers energy from braking. Whether this was a software fault or a specification fault isn’t clear but it reveals that when we add complexity to a system, we are likely to run into problems. Toyota are being rightly criticised for this (and, for sure, they have handled the problem badly) but they are being innovative and an inevitable part of the price of innovation is that problems will occur.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Optimism Persists in a Kentucky Town Where a Carmaker Brought Jobs
GEORGETOWN, Ky. – Before Toyota arrived here more than two decades ago, Georgetown was a sleepy town of 10,000. Its population has since swelled to 25,000, and most of those people owe their livelihood to the sprawling Toyota plant outside of town on Cherry Blossom Way.
People here are eager to see the company’s recall problems blow over. “I think they can get it worked out,” said Jeni Gruchow, co-owner of Fava’s restaurant in the heart of town. “It happens to other companies. It’s horrible that it’s happening to Toyota.” In Georgetown, which is about 15 miles west of Lexington, and other cities where Toyota operates plants in the United States, life is starting to return a bit more to normal this week, as they resume full production after weeklong shutdowns to fix a problem with accelerator pedals. In interviews, residents here expressed confidence that Toyota would thrive again. The town and the automaker are inextricably linked – the first Camry rolled off the line in 1988 – so it is of course in everyone’s interest to see Toyota out of the headlines. “Toyota’s past will take care of its future,” said George Lusby, the county judge-executive who holds the top administrative post in the county. The mayor, Karen Tingle-Sames, was just as optimistic. “Really, the community has a lot of confidence in Toyota, that they will be able to work through and fix everything they need to fix and get on top of everything,” she said. Just down the street from Fava’s, Jason D. Mays, a regular at the Lock and Key Cafe, drained his mug of coffee and speculated about the muted response here to Toyota’s woes. “In my honest opinion,” he said, “I do not think it’s as important to people as the Friday night Scott County game or the Saturday Georgetown College basketball game because they have enough faith in that behemoth of a plant three miles down the road, they are really not worried about it.” Perhaps residents were heeding the editorial last Thursday of the local newspaper, The Georgetown News-Graphic. “Rest easy, Toyota is on the job,” the headline said. Mike Scogin, the publisher, said he wrote it to encourage everyone to take a deep breath because he felt “there was a little bit of piling on going on.” Toyota’s reputation was not earned overnight, he wrote, nor was it “bestowed because the company is reckless.” “In many parts of the country, Toyota is a brand,” the editorial added. “But to those of us here in Georgetown and in Kentucky, we know Toyota because we are Toyota. Our friends, neighbors and family members manufacture the cars in question.” For more than a week, Mr. Scogin said, Toyota news has dominated the front page of the newspaper, which is published three times a week. By Saturday, coverage of the murder of a former school bus driver was the top story. There is hope here that the full-court press on Toyota will peter out. As Doug C. Smith, a regular at Fava’s, said on Friday. “This, too, shall pass.” But the coverage is likely to continue with a House committee scheduled to hold hearings on Wednesday about Toyota’s handling of the recalls. If the tone is anything like the remarks of Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, who last week briefly advised Toyota owners to stop driving their cars, confidence here may give way to anger. “Why is this different than any other recall?” asked Jack Conner, executive director of the local chamber of commerce. “Why the magnitude of this concern, when this is something that happens in the business a lot?” Ford, General Motors and others have had problems over the years without the national media attacking them, added Mr. Lusby, the judge-executive. Meanwhile, not even the beloved Kentucky Wildcats provided total escape from the sting of Toyota criticism. During a game Saturday afternoon, the announcer praised Kentucky’s standout guard, John Wall, by comparing him to a Toyota: “He hits the acceleration, then slams on the brakes,” he said, then added “Even better than Toyota. The brakes work, so does the acceleration.”
By MICKEY MEECE
Toyota Troubles: Lessons in How (Not) to Handle a Green Halo
In an automaker’s lineup, a “halo” car is meant to cast a positive glow over a company or brand — showcasing technology, styling and smarts while also helping to define what the brand stands for and luring customers into showrooms to buy other models. The Prius did this to such remarkable effect for Toyota that the industry took notice. As GM-Volt tells it, the status Toyota acquired as “a media and environmental sweetheart” through the halo effect of the Prius helped inspire GM’s push for the plug-in Volt. But hanging so much of your reputation on one model also carries risk — and that can get lost in the green glow.
Supporting the Halo: Automakers can ride the wave of a halo for awhile, but sustaining a reputation for environmental innovation will require follow through. As BusinessWeek explained in a 2006 piece on halo models, automakers risk falling short of customers’ expectations when they launch (and sometimes hype) these defining vehicles. ”A halo car is a promise,” one analyst explained in the article. “A promise of what great things are coming down the road from the manufacturer. But if that promise falls short the people who took a chance will be slighted and will probably never come back.”
Toyota built up on the promise it made with the Prius, producing one of the industry’s most fuel efficient lineups. How much load Toyota ends up shifting off of the Prius model in the wake of these recent braking problems, and how consumers respond in coming months, will offer a hint of just how far startups can go with their eye-catching first models (Tesla with its Roadster, Fisker with its Karma) en route to more mainstream offerings.
The Tortoise Wins: As the maelstrom around Toyota grows, critics and observers have begun asking whether Toyota grew too big, too fast — prioritizing new markets, new models and ramped-up production over quality. To what degree the emphasis on growth is responsible for Toyota’s current predicament can be debated. But it should nonetheless offer a warning to companies that have pledged ambitious production ramp ups in loan agreements with the Department of Energy in recent months. At the end of the day, it’s better to have a reputation for delays (in the green car market, that’s almost standard at this point) than for defects.
Value of Transparency: Part of Toyota’s troubles at this point stem from the question of how much evidence it had about safety problems, and when, and why it didn’t take action sooner. As the Christian Science Monitor wrote on Monday: “[I]f Toyota had a problem with sticky accelerators in Europe as early as December 2008, why did it wait until the following October before investigating the problem in the United States? And why fix the problem in new vehicles on the assembly line but not on cars already on the street?”
The company now faces a growing number of lawsuits, and the lesson is a simple, somewhat hokey one: Honesty is often the best policy — for safety as well as performance issues. For electric car makers that anticipate battery performance and longevity may vary based on climate and temperature, for example, following this policy would call for public recognition of that tendency (as GM’s Bob Lutz has done, while Tesla has portrayed “the potential for extreme temperatures to affect the range or performance of electric vehicles,” as a somewhat surprising new discovery).
Expect the Script to Flip: Automakers seem to be playing musical chairs in the hot seat. Whether under scrutiny for bankruptcy or basking in the glow of a government award, successful launch or trendsetting model, companies in today’s tumultuous car market can see public attention shift relatively quickly. The Detroit Free Press notes research from BrandIndex today showing, “Consumers say they have heard more negative news about Toyota in recent days than they heard about General Motors and Chrysler during their bankruptcies last spring.” Toyota’s next test comes up this week, at the first Congressional hearings on Toyota’s response to reports of safety issues in its vehicles.
What do you think are some of the key lessons for green car makers can take from Toyota’s handling of the sudden acceleration and braking problems in its vehicles?
Businesses Must (Always) Remember Crosby's Quality Management Absolutes otherwise YOU are in (BIG)trouble!
Ramli have been a student of the Gurus of Quality like Juran,Deming,Crosby,Ishikawa,Imai and many others…
Example like Dr.Philip Crosby teachings on the 4 Quality Management Absolutes that are:
1.Quality means conformance to requirments
2.Quality is obtained through prevention
3.Quality has a performance standard of zero defects
4.Quality is measured by the price of nonconformance.
If Business Leaders always study,practice and live “Quality” then the chances of a major quality problem or crisis is almost null or zero occurences.
In 2010,Ramli heard that the World Economic Forum in Davos came to realize the need for Relearning of Fundamental Skills of Managing and Leading Rightly for Top Executives both in Business and Goverment.The many problems of businesses and govt have occured rampantly in the last 5 years or so and maybe its time to “go back to school” rather than “making money like mad” with poor quality results and products offered to the customers or citizens alike.
Ramli hoped Business Leaders “really” study about what is Quality and how to lead their organisations on Managing Quality themselves and not allow their salient duties of Managing & Leading Quality to be delegable to their No.2 or No.3 amd worst still to the Quality Manager!
Here is an article on the recent Toyota Quality Problem-Time to rethink and restudy all things that Dr.Crosby have taught us so hard so well.
Toyota faces fresh questions over recall response
AFP – Tuesday, February 9,2010.
TOKYO (AFP) – – Toyota’s handling of dangerous defects in its cars came under fresh scrutiny Monday as the group was reported to be planning a global recall of 300,000 Prius hybrids worldwide over a brake problem.
The world’s largest auto maker is expected to tell Tokyo and Washington Tuesday it will pull the latest version of the cars that went on sale from May last year, Japan’s Kyodo News agency said late Monday, citing unnamed sources.
“Toyota is also considering filing recalls over other hybrid models, such as the luxury Lexus HS250h sedan and the hybrid-only Sai compact sedan, which employ a similar brake system to the Prius gas-electric hybrid,” the agency quoted the sources as saying.
The brake trouble comes on top of recalls of more than eight million vehicles worldwide due to sticking accelerator pedals that have severely tarnished the Japanese giant’s reputation for reliability.
The company, whose brand has long been synonymous with safety and quality, faces a class-action lawsuit on behalf of owners in the United States alleging that it hid problems that have led to the rash of recalls.
And Toyota’s North America president, Yoshimi Inaba, is set to testify at a US congressional hearing on Wednesday as part of a wider probe by lawmakers.
Toyota has denied it was slow to respond to the unintended acceleration issue but faces new questions about its handling of the episode, after it emerged that the company acted on the problem in Europe about six months ago.
“We did fix this in August last year (in Europe) after first hearing about the issue at the end of 2008,” said Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco.
But it was initially thought that the problem only affected European right-hand drive vehicles, sold mainly in Britain and Ireland, he said.
Related article: Toyota recall raises questions about computerized cars
The trouble was attributed to the car heater blowing hot air on the gas pedal, causing condensation to build up inside and result in sticking, but was not thought to occur in left-hand drive models, he said.
Toyota officials could not immediately confirm whether any action was taken at that point for vehicles already on the road in Europe.
Toyota has come under fire after saying it had fixed the brake system flaw during production of the latest Prius model last month, without warning drivers of those vehicles already on the road.
Toyota is believed to have already notified its dealers in Japan that it will pull all the new model Prius vehicles sold in Japan, amounting to about 170,000 units. The firm will recall about 100,000 Priuses in the US.
Related article: Prius woes may muffle hybrid buzz
The model — which combines a petrol combustion engine with a battery-powered electric motor — is Toyota’s flagship hybrid car and key to its efforts to stay in pole position in fuel-efficient vehicles.
Toyota, which in 2008 dethroned General Motors as the world’s biggest car maker, has seen its brand image badly hurt by its handling of recalls affecting more than its entire 2009 global sales of 7.8 million vehicles.
The accelerator problems have been blamed for several accidents, including one in California in August in which four family members were killed.
Company president Akio Toyoda said Friday he was “deeply sorry” for the string of quality issues and said he would head a new task force to raise standards and investigate the cause of the problems.
Toyota shares fell 1.05 percent to 3,280 yen on Monday, having plunged by more than 20 percent in roughly two weeks.
Toyota has said it expects the accelerator trouble to burn a two-billion-dollar hole in its profits this year in recall costs and lost sales.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
sent to me from TORC
Dear Toyota owners,
As you are the proud long-time owner of a Toyota vehicle, recent news about Toyota’s recalls must be disheartening. However, we feel the media is taking this out of proportion. What’s done is done and now Toyota is all about correcting the issues and restoring public trust. We would like to continue supporting Toyota, as always, by what we do.
Here is a great article for you to read about the recall issue. We are glad not all media is trying to jump on Toyota.
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1128584
Saturday, February 6, 2010
MX71 TT
Hella uptown Twin turbo MX71 Mark II Cressida on custom steel wheels.
Build thread… http://www.oldschool.co.nz/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4433&hilit=lofa
Thursday, February 4, 2010
An Amateur Organisation: Part 2
The New Sponsorship Deal:
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On the 19th March 2008, GAA President Nickey Brennan announced a new list of sponsors for the Hurling and Football Championships. The Hurling Championship would now be sponsored by Etihad Airways, Guinness and RTE. The Football championship would be sponsored by Vodafone, Ulster Bank and Toyota. Research carried out in 2007 strongly endorsed the multiple sponsor concept, a practice previously associated with competitions such as the Champions League Soccer tournament which is sponsored by a number of companies. Padhraic O’Ciardha of TG4 believes that one sponsor for each code would have been a better option stating,
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In short, I’m not sure that the commercial arm of the GAA speaks with the same tongue as the sporting arm of the GAA. […] It is not always clear that the commercial arm isn’t getting the upper hand and I think that probably is bad for the GAA.[1]
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Because most sports are professional, and the GAA is the only amateur organisation in Ireland, there is perhaps pressure on them. The saying goes, “The GAA is an amateur organisation, run by professionals.” The question is, however, will that which works for professional organisations like FIFA and the Champion’s League, work for the GAA, a far smaller association, with less players and an amateur status? Under the new sponsorship the championships names would change to the GAA Hurling All Ireland Championship and GAA Football All Ireland Championship. “Because title ownership of the All Ireland Championships reverts to the GAA, the introduction of new signage, broadcast, advertising and promotional agreements around the Championships is also being introduced.”[2] Of the new sponsorship deal, President Nickey Brennan stated,
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I am also pleased to announce that the GAA will be investing in a major marketing support campaign to promote the Championships which will include a comprehensive advertising, PR and promotional drive throughout the duration of the competitions. The GAA’s Commercial & Marketing team has been bolstered and PR and Advertising agencies have been appointed to oversee the roll out of what we hope will be an effective campaign to promote the GAA Championships.[3] (Italics Website’s Own)
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This is an interesting statement to look at, not only because it reveals a seeming emphasis on commercial partnership for the GAA to prosper, but also because there seems to be a slight worry when it comes to marketing the GAA. One must ask if there is a fear in the organisation that GAA is losing some of its appeal to viewers and if this is resulting in the need for the bolstering of the PR and advertising. The other interesting statement in relation to this point comes from Geraldine O’Leary of RTE who says:
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RTÉ is delighted to be one of the partners who have secured sponsorship of the hurling championship for the next two years. This sponsorship provides a platform for RTÉ Sport to reinforce our brand with a huge number of GAA fans while strengthening our association with our national game.[4] (Italics Website’s Own)
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There seems to be a sense of fear in both statements, of losing some semblance of national identity and importance; the GAA as that of the national game, and RTE as that of the national station. As I will examine in Chapter 2, there has been recent and I believe, ongoing speculation about TV Rights for GAA and this, of course, would have a bearing on RTE and their public broadcast remit. One thing that must be looked at here is the growth of rugby and soccer in the country, and ultimately the relaxing of Rule 42. It could be argued that the relaxing of Rule 42 and the opening of Croke Park has led to a sense of diminishment within the GAA, the idea that if the national home of GAA is to be open to all, it is no longer the home of the GAA but just a place where GAA takes place. Because of Croke Park’s status, albeit unofficial, as the National Stadium, it has been easy to highlight the GAA, previously, the only sport played there, as the National Sport. However, with the opening of the stadium to Rugby and Soccer, that line can be seen to have become blurred, and it is possible that the GAA fear that their status as the dominant national game is being damaged. Padhraic O’Ciardha believes that the lines have not been blurred and that people who know little or nothing about GAA come away from Croke Park after rugby or soccer matches with a better idea of what the GAA does, and its importance in the country, aswell as seeing what a magnificent stadium Croke Park is. He also mentions how the GAA handled the relaxing or “getting rid” of Rule 42 very well. There have been recent calls for Croke Park to remain open after Lansdowne Road, the original home of rugby and soccer is reopened. This statement seems to suggest that Mr O’Ciardha believes that the GAA will continue to allow Croke Park to be used. The question seems to be that of co-existence. Can the GAA and the other sports of the country co-exist in the one location without a fear of losing identity? The GAA has the opportunity to respond to this argument with their decision about whether or not to reintroduce Rule 42, which at the time of it’s lifting had been intended on being nothing more than temporary.
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The question of professionalism also expands as a result of the multiple sponsorship deal. If the GAA can earn huge sums of money from sponsorship campaigns, shouldn’t players be allowed to, too? Admittedly there are a small number of players who benefit from personal sponsorship already (i.e. Sean Óg O’hAilpin) but is this not another step towards professionalism? The fact that this new sponsorship deal is the same format as that of the Champion’s League, or FIFA World Cup, which are both professional competitions, suggests a hint of burgeoning professionalism and most likely, increased commercialism. Each county has its own sponsors who appear on jerseys, etc, but when players begin to make their own individual commercial decisions, despite their status as players of an amateur game, is this not a further step towards professionalism?
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[1] See Appendix 1, p.33[2] GAA Announce Championship Sponsors, http://ulster.gaa.ie/media/press-releases/
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
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