Article Analysis on QualityOrganizations today must rely on quality to remain competitive in its industry, especially with globalization on the rise. Globalization broadens the market for many organizations and awareness on quality can help an organization maintain its competitive edge. This quality issue is portrayed in a recent article about the recent increase in vehicle recalls by Toyota. In this paper, I will summarize the article about Toyota's quality issues and including my interpretation of the problem. In addition, I will discuss how Toyota's quality issue should be resolved.
Article SummaryAccording to Maynard and Fackler (2006), although Toyota has been known to be the "crème de la crème" in the quality department, Toyota car owners have been receiving letters in the mail about vehicle recalls. As the world's largest automaker and its largest market in the United States, Toyota car owners are learning that the power steering on the popular hybrid Prius may malfunction or that the tires on the compact pick-up trucks may bulge, or even worse, burst.
English: 3rd generation Toyota Prius G (2009/5 - )...
MEGAWEB (Showroom of Toyota)
2007-2009 Toyota Camry photographed in College Par...Another recall describes how the airbags in these vehicles may not even inflate in the event of a crash.
A report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (cited in Maynard & Fackler, 2006) states that Toyota recalled 2.2 million vehicles in 2005 in the U.S., doubling the number of recalled vehicles in 2004. In its home country of Japan, Toyota's recalls have quadrupled since 2001 to 1.9 million vehicles in 2005, although most of those recalls were for vehicles more than 10 years old. Another article goes on to state that in 2005 in the U.S, "Toyota recalled more autos than it sold (2.38 million vs. 2.26 million)" (Towns, 2006). To fully understand how Toyota compares to other Japanese automakers, the Transportation Ministry (cited in Maynard & Fackler, 2006)...