Toyota’s new Europe manufacturing head Tetsuo Agata wants to fix “weak points” between the car maker’s factories and its suppliers.
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Agata told Automotive News Europe (ANE) that Toyota wants to work more closely with suppliers to overcome quality problems that have led to the recall of about 470,000 Toyota cars in Europe so far this year. Among them were the Corolla, made in both the UK and Turkey, and the UK-built Avensis.
“We are working hard to improve the working relationship between factories and suppliers worldwide to eradicate possible weak points,” Agata told ANE. “We also are working more closely with suppliers in terms of technical developments to ‘build in’ quality. This means helping suppliers better understand our requirements from an early stage but also helping them improve processes to deliver better quality and lower costs.”
Toyota believes that improving built-in quality on the assembly line reduces post-production inspections and repairs.
Toyota aims to sell 1.2m cars in Europe by 2010. Two thirds of these will be made in Europe. Toyota built 411,005 cars at its European assembly plants in the first six months of this year, according to JD Power Automotive Forecasting, an increase of more than 30% over the same period last year.
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