3.04.2010

丰田:这一战为名誉 - 专访博斯公司高级顾问罗威(Bill Russo)

Gasgoo.com China Automotive News, March 4, 2010
  • 作者:Sophie Lu 来源:盖世汽车网 发布时间:2010年03月04日
    • 引子:丰田在美国市场引发一系列召回事件之后,从丰田章男主动到中国市场道歉和说明情况的举动,可以看到丰田正在显著加速危机处理速度。对于此次丰田召回事件,盖世汽车网特意采访了博斯公司的高级顾问罗威(Bill Russo)先生,他认为丰田当务之急是重拾将之前引以为傲的质量品牌。

      博斯公司高级顾问罗威(Bill Russo)

      盖世汽车网:您认为造成这次丰田大规模召回的原因是什么?是否是价值链管理体系方面的问题?如果是的话,具体是什么问题?

      罗威:丰田汽车出现加速器问题的根本原因仍在调查中,但丰田最流行的几款车型中存在的类似问题更像整个系统的设计中存在的一些固有缺陷。应该指出的是,这只是丰田最近公布的几个质量缺陷中的一个,这说明丰田并不只是一个部门或只是供应链管理体系出了问题,而可能是更综合性的问题。丰田以一种不可持续的速度过快扩张,并为此牺牲质量承诺,最终导致出现召回汽车数超过8百万辆的无奈局面。

      丰田前任领导提出的争取全球市场15%份额的目标成为丰田集团的首要目标,也导致了丰田对质量要求的大意。由于过分追逐市场份额,丰田不惜在巨大风险压力下拿产品开发作赌注,使得诸多质量问题接踵而至。

      盖世汽车网:您认为此次大规模召回对丰田目前和将来发展有何影响?

      罗威:这次召回涉及丰田在美国的8款最受欢迎的车型(可占其在美国销量的一半)。至于具体的直接销售损失,丰田在美国一月份的销量下降16%,即表明2010年的汽车总销量将缩减约30万辆。而这次召回将使2010年丰田的全球销量减少500,000多辆。当然,丰田除了召回本身的损失,其产量与产值也遭遇了大幅下降,预估损失约合20亿美元。

      这次召回事件的危机阴霾可能远不止数字上的损失,更惨重的代价可能是人们对丰田质量与可靠性的公信力的摧毁,对丰田来说这无疑是一场刻骨铭心的挑战。而对丰田来说,当务之急便是重塑它们为之奋斗几十年才建立起来的信誉。人们常说信任源于一生的不懈倾注,但顷刻之间也能毁于一旦。召回事件给丰田带来了一系列的毁灭性的质量溃败的打击,丰田在全球顾客心目中的品牌形象与信心势必需要艰苦重建。

      丰田很多经营管理原则和实践曾被全球汽车业奉为圭皋,现在则遭到怀疑。比如,丰田在整个产品系列中使用通用件的做法,已成为汽车业的一个惯例,但现在却成为导致丰田的召回危机扩大的因素。另外,召回也显示出了诊断机电系统故障原因的繁复程度,以及对更有效的问题识别和解决流程的欠缺。

    盖世汽车网:丰田现正积极行动,采取一系列措施挽回这次召回造成的消极影响。您如何评价丰田为此做出反应与处理方案?

    罗威:丰田必须采取明确措施将经营重点回归到提供高品质汽车上来。丰田必须通过这次危机表现出其对消费者的承诺及其发现问题根源并消除问题的能力。这些问题,不仅是表面的加速器等产品问题,也包括将经营重点错误地放在了追逐超速发展上。

    丰田召回事件对其他汽车企业而言则是一个机会,他们可以借此契机将曾经的丰田忠实用户争取过来。而丰田用户由此遭受的最实际影响是汽车残余价值可能下降,进而造成汽车月租费的直接下挫。这也使其它品牌在顾客比较各品牌车的整体拥有成本时更具竞争力,而这个成本曾是丰田汽车长期以来的核心竞争力。

    然而,危机对一个公司来说恰是一个关键性时刻;因为在危机时刻,高级领导层可以以此为契机向人们展示公司秉承的永恒价值。丰田能够通过这次危机向世人证明对消费者的承诺以及其发现问题根源并消除问题的能力。通过及时采取适当举措,丰田可以挽留住顾客的信任度,并从这次危机中全身而退。尽管丰田在发现问题严重性方面确实存在滞后,但它最近已采取积极行动来抑制不良影响,而其品牌能否重新赢得人们的信赖,仍尚待分晓。

    文章来源:盖世汽车网

    click here to view the original interview posted on Gasgoo.com's China Automotive News

Heading Out: Chinese Commercial Vehicles Companies Look Overseas

China Economic Review, March 2010

In July 2009, German commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN Group (EMG.LSE) bought a 25% share in Sinotruk (3808.HK), the subsidiary of China National Heavy Duty Truck Group, for US$827 million.

Supported by MAN's global sales network and technological expertise, Sinotruk is now preparing to push into developed markets like Europe and America.

The firm already exports to South Africa, Russia, and other developing countries, and according to Jia Xinguang, chief analyst at China's Auto Magazine, Chinese commercial vehicles have achieved a degree of global competitiveness in emerging markets like the Middle East. However, only a few Chinese manufacturers - Sinotruk included - have followed the lead of international truck makers and vertically integrated their supply chains.

Bill Russo, senior advisor at Booz & Company, said China's undeveloped powertrain technology remains the bottleneck for export growth, but as Western brands like MAN and Daimler (DAI.NYSE) become premium vehicle manufacturers, it leaves the door open for Chinese players.

Domestic manufacturer Beiqi Foton Motor (600166.SH) signed a deal in 2009 to export a range of heavy-duty trucks in South Africa, and set up a joint venture with Daimler that will target Russia and South America. The domestic success of Chinese firms like Shanghai-GM-Wuling (SGMW) has also assisted with export plans: SGMW has established a factory in India to bring its successful Sunshine minibus to foreign markets.

"The Chinese companies today have enough opportunities in their home market, and they are pursuing that as their primary objective," said
Russo. "But there is prestige and incremental growth that is achievable if you can access some of these regional markets first."

However, Chinese commercial vehicle companies may be getting ahead of themselves if they target developed markets too soon. Even before overcoming challenges of sales and branding, they must meet requirements like international emissions standards. For now, it might be easier to rely on less exacting developing markets for a chance to build sales networks and new customer bases.

"I think it's going to be a while before you see any Chinese-branded vehicles in more mature markets,"
Russo said.

3.03.2010

How The Toyota Way Went Astray

by Bill Russo(罗威) and Jeffrey Zhao (赵新智)


Toyota’s U.S. sales in February 2010 totaled 100,027 vehicles, an 8.7% drop from last year. While this result is better than most market predictions, it does not signal an end to the most severe recall crisis in the company’s history. While the root cause of Toyota’s massive accelerator recall problem is still under investigation, the problem is more likely inherent in the design of the overall system which is found in several of Toyota's most popular vehicles. It should also be noted that this is just one of several recent quality spills that Toyota has been addressing, which indicates a much more systemic problem within the Toyota Motor Corporation than just this particular issue. Many have in fact begun to question Toyota’s management processes and supply chain management system.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the current problems are an outgrowth of a plan to grow the business too quickly at an unsustainable speed, which as a result forced it to compromise its commitment to quality which led to the global auto giant's massive global recall of more than 8 million vehicles. The mandate from Toyota's previous leadership to capture 15 percent of the global market share became the overwhelming priority and forced the company to compromise quality. By chasing market share as a primary goal, Toyota took on too much risk in the development of their products, which allowed quality issues to surface.

Impact On Toyota’s Current And Future Development

This recall impacts eight of Toyota's most popular models that contribute more than half of their U.S. sales. To specify the immediate sales damage, Toyota stands to lose about 300,000 vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2010. Worldwide impact of over a half-million units of lost sales in 2010 is also possible. Of course, Toyota has already suffered a dramatic decline in revenue and lost production, in addition to the cost of the recall itself, estimated to be around 2 billion U.S. dollars.

Perhaps even more significantly, this crisis represents a monumental challenge for Toyota's reputation for quality and reliability. The more significant challenge for Toyota will be to repair the reputation for quality that they have worked for decades to establish. It is often said that trust is earned over a lifetime, but it can be lost in just one event. In this case, Toyota has been hit with a series of increasingly damaging quality problems, and will struggle to restore the image and confidence of consumers around the world. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll published recently, 31 percent of Americans think it is unsafe to be in a Toyota or Lexus product, and 55 percent said that Toyota did not respond promptly to the safety problems.

Once the benchmark of the global auto industry, many of Toyota's "best practices" must now be re-evaluated. For example, Toyota's ability to use common parts across a cross-section of its product portfolio has long been considered a benchmark for the industry - a practice that has apparently magnified the impact of the crisis. In addition, the recall illustrates how complicated it can be to diagnose the cause of failure of electro-mechanical systems, and points to a need for a more efficient process for diagnosing and containing such problems. Toyota’s failure to fix the defects in gas pedal design over the past two years also raises questions regarding their true commitment to product quality and customer value, since the initial reports of the problem with acceleration began as early as 2007.

Toyota’s Response To The Crisis

Toyota must take definitive steps to re-focus its business on what we all know it is capable of: delivering high quality vehicles. Toyota must use this crisis to demonstrate its commitment to customers or risk permanent loss of trust. This applies to the accelerator problem as well as the problem of Toyota's misplaced focus on growth at unsustainable speed.

Toyota's recall presents an opportunity to other automakers that will now gain the consideration of Toyota's once fiercely loyal consumers. The very tangible impact on Toyota's customers will be a potential decline in the residual value of their cars, which has a direct impact on the amount of their monthly lease payment and used car prices. This makes other brands more competitive when consumers compare the cost of ownership, which has always been a core strength for Toyota products. Based on February sales results, several brands operating in US market realized sales gains in February. The largest winners were Ford, up by 46%, Honda by 13% and Hyundai by 11%.

However, crises are defining moments in for a company, because it is in times of crisis that senior leadership has the opportunity to demonstrate the values that a company is willing to hold true. With appropriate action, Toyota can emerge from the crisis without a permanent loss of consumer trust. While there are signs that Toyota was initially slow in waking up to the extent of the problem, they have recently taken steps to contain the impact and it remains to be seen if they will ultimately restore the trust that has become the hallmark of their brand. One very positive step recently taken has been to post full-page advertisements in major US press such as Washington Post, where several times a week Toyota is reporting the progress of the recall and investigation. They have also announced zero-percent financing on most models plus two years of free maintenance to returning customers.

“The Toyota Way” Goes Astray

Toyota‘s supply chain management is a key component of the “4P” model of the Toyota way of doing business, which is a set of guiding principles governing R&D, manufacturing, logistics and procurement. The 4P model involves the following principles and is the backbone of the Toyota ProductionSystem, JIT logistics system, and supplier partnering process:

  1. Continuously solving root problems to drive organizational learning
  2. Adding value to the organization by developing people and partners
  3. Using the right process to produce the right results
  4. Employing a philosophy of long-term thinking

Western auto companies use a variety of management styles, but most of them began as fully integrated vehicle developers and manufacturers covering almost every aspect of component development and production. Over time, they began to outsource component development in order to lower their overall cost of doing business. In the Western model, relationships with component suppliers became mainly based on bidding and price. It is not as close and interactive as Toyota’s historical approach to supplier partnership.

Given the scale of this and other recent recalls, many are now questioning if the problem is rooted in Toyota's supply-chain management system. First of all, Toyota has already clearly taken the responsibility for all the defects behind the recent recalls. Toyota has stated that the problem is rooted in their own design of the acceleration system. Toyota’s inability to quickly diagnose and contain the problem during the development process indicates how complicated electro-mechanical systems have become. Of course, once the cause of such quality problems are known it takes a collaborative effort between Toyota and its global partners to eliminate the problem.

Beyond the problem with the acceleration system, Toyota has been dealing with a series of increasingly serious recalls that suggest a more fundamental problem is occurring. It appears that Toyota’s aggressive business expansion goals have caused them to lose focus on adherence to the principles embodied in the “4P” model. Pursuing global expansion and volume growth at an unsustainable speed placed considerable pressure on the product development and supply resources that were unable to keep pace. This allowed quality risks to enter the system. Toyota President Akio Toyoda has acknowledged this and has reprioritized the main goals of the company, shifting focus away from growth and expansion back towards quality management. While having acknowledged the problem, the challenge is to return the company back to its famous quality management principles.

Another challenge that Toyota must address is to revisit the approach to sharing common components across multiple platforms and products. While this approach has helped Toyota reduce development costs, it has also magnified the risk for exposure to a quality defect across a wide range of their product portfolio.

Retaining Best practices in Supply-Chain Management

Toyota has a long history of building partnerships with different tier-level parts suppliers.

  • Toyota historically has involved their suppliers as partners in an iterative, converging design process — not as commodity bidders to a moving target,
  • The relationship is founded on a win-win effort to reduce product cost, rather than a zero-sum negotiation around product price,
  • This Knowledge-Based approach focuses on ideal performance and drives a continuous learning cycle,
  • The result is higher quality, lower warranty cost, and higher overall value

Starting from building their vehicle assembly facilities in America decades ago, Toyota began development of their local supply base. Throughout the 1990s, they developed about 100 local suppliers in North America and also managed them in a traditional way. Toyota communicated, coached and challenged those suppliers through various supplier councils and training facilities.

Entering the 2000s, Toyota accelerated their global market expansion, and significantly increased the number of suppliers, and spreading their development resources over a much greater number of programs. Faced with fierce cost competition and profit growth objectives, Toyota may have compromised those key principles, which had served them so well in the past.

Conclusions and Lessons Learned

As already noted, Toyota’s crisis can be attributed to their aggressive global expansion which forced them to lose sight of the “4P” way of doing business. Product development and supply resources were faced with an increasing number of programs with targets that were not achievable. These risks ultimately allowed the quality problems to surface.

Many lessons can be learned from Toyota’s experience, but the most important aspect is to keep alert on the systemic risk when pursuing growth at what is apparently an unsustainable pace. Also, organizations must retain a primary focus on what has made them successful. An organization like Toyota must never allow compromise to the quality management principles and consumer trust. Having experienced this problem, emphasis must also be placed on how to repair the reputation through prompt crisis management. Toyota can use this crisis to demonstrate its commitment to customers and its famous ability to identify and eliminate the root cause of the problem.

Pursuit of growth and cost control should never be an excuse for compromising rigorous design and quality validation. Having learned this hard lesson, Toyota has started the process of recovery by taking full responsibility for this recall. They must now review and eliminate the causes that are rooted in their recent business priorities and operation management in order to reestablish “The Toyota Way” of doing business.

Click here to view article published at GLG News

中国影响全球汽车业变革的八大论据

Gasgoo.com, March 1, 2010

Click here to view a summary of the Eight Overarching China Automotive Trends series published in Chinese by Gasgoo.com