Founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda, as of January 2014, Toyota Motor Corporation is the fourteenth-largest company in the world by revenue. Toyoda, 57, is remaking the company founded by his grandfather as the CEO.
“Toyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,” said Jeff Liker, according to Bloomberg News. Jeff Liker has written eight books on Toyota and visited Kawai last year. He also said that, “In almost every company you would visit, the workers’ jobs are to feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down.”
Toyota is the world’s first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year. It did so in 2012 according to OICA.
Mitsuru Kawai a company veteran said “We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” according to Bloomberg News the Toyota worker also shared that, “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.”
A professor at the University of Tokyo’s Manufacturing Management Research Center, Takahiro Fujimoto, reported that “Fully automated machines don’t evolve on their own. Toyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,” reported author, Jeff Liker.
To fix problems linked to an unintended acceleration issue, the Toyota Company agreed to pay a record $1.2 billion penalty to end a probe by the U.S. Justice Department, which said that Toyota had covered up information and had also misled the public at the time.
It has been reported that Toyota has set a target for 2014 to sell more than 10 million vehicles. On May 8, 2013, Toyota Motor Corporation announced its financial results for the fiscal year; net revenues totaled 22.0 trillion yen. If you would like more information about employment opportunities with the Toyota Motor readers can click here.
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