Toyota just announced the formation of its all-new North American Quality Task Force. Led by Steve St. Angelo, the Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America (TEMA), the task force will ensure that regional improvements to quality are employed in accordance with guidelines created by the Special Committee for Global Quality led by Toyota Motor Corporation President Akio Toyoda.
“The aim of our new quality task force is to assure that all of us in North America listen and respond to the voice of the customer,” said Dino Triantafyllos, the vice president of quality at TEMA, whose job it will be to ensure customer concerns are not ignored. “My primary responsibility is to assure that we utilize all of the data at our disposal and that we promptly decide the appropriate action.”
Toyota has established a number of new regional task forces to oversee that quality is being upheld throughout the automaker’s entire global operations. The task force will conduct quality improvement activities in conjunction with the six-point action plan outlined by President Akio Toyoda in early February which includes the following:
- Improve Quality Inspection Process
- Enhance Customer Research
- Establish an “Automotive Center of Quality Excellence”
- Support from Outside Experts
- Increased Communication
- Improve regional autonomy
In addition to internal improvements, Toyota will also be working with an independent advisory panel headed up by former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.
While scrutiny still lingers over Toyota’s unintended acceleration issues, the automaker still manages to achieve praise for dependability, which begs the question: How much of Toyota’s “quality problems” stem from the media hype?
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