Toyota has announced a wide-ranging consolidation of its diesel engine, manual transmission and braking businesses.
The moves are aimed at freeing the world’s largest car company to concentrate on developing what it calls “cutting-edge base technologies” while giving its suppliers the chance to become more efficient and competitive.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Diesel engine development and production, currently a joint business between Toyota Motor and Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO) will come under the control of TICO, adding automotive diesel engine technology to its forklift truck engine and industrial machinery fields.
Toyota said in a statement the move will enable TICO to both expand the scale of its business and improve the efficiency of its development work.
Manual transmission development and production will be consolidated under the control of Aisin AI, a subsidiary of Aisin Seiki. Aisin AI is a specialist manufacturer of manual transmissions for automakers around the world and the move is seen as giving Aisin Al the potential to become one of the world’s leading specialist manufacturers by enhancing its ability to plan and make proposals related to manual transmissions.
Toyota said that bringing the development and Japanese production of manual transmissions under one roof will allow more efficient allocation of resources.
Production of manual transmissions currently carried out at TMC’s Kinuura plant will be transferred to Aisin AI around 2016.
The third move sees the consolidation of Toyota’s brake systems engineering, manufacturing and sales under the control of Advics, a company founded in July 2001 by Aisin Seiki, Denso, Sumitomo Electric and TMC.
From January 2016, manufacturing of electronically controlled brake systems will be gradually transferred from Aisin Seiki’s Handa plant and Denso’s Daian plant to a new factory to be built by Advics in Handa, Aichi prefecture.
