Toyota breakdowns 'spark new era'

18 March 2010

Toyota's president has vowed to take the company "back to basics" in order to tackle the quality control problems that led to millions of cars being recalled due to faults.

Akio Toyoda said the company would become a "small Toyota" instead of focusing on sales expansion in order to meet the crisis head on.

Toyoda, grandson of the car maker's founder, said the training of workers to maintain quality control failed to keep up with the company's rapid growth and the problem hit crisis point after Toyota's global production and sales breached six million vehicles in 2002.

The president promised to ensure better quality controls in the future and is looking at easier routes to promotion for non-Japanese employees. Hew said the moves will allow the company to better respond to different customer needs.

Toyota's quality controls have been under fire after massive global recalls starting late last year for defective accelerators, faulty floor mats and flawed braking affecting more than eight million vehicles, mostly in North America.

"It has been tough and frustrating emotionally for me, but we must accept it as an inevitable," he told Japan's top business daily The Nikkei.

Toyoda was widely criticised for being invisible when the quality problems surfaced last year. He has appeared since then at news conferences in Japan. He attended a US congressional hearing last month on Toyota's recalls.

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