丰田背后二三事

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What’s wrong with Toyota?

Not much. At least not from an engineering, mechanical or even a quality point of view. You don’t reach the top gear in the global auto industry unless you make outstanding cars, which Toyota does―most of the time. Though cars are familiar machines, they are also highly complex ones.

What makes the recall since November 2009 of nearly 9 million Toyotas that are susceptible to uncontrolled acceleration and balky brakes such a shocking story is not so much the company’s manufacture of some shoddy cars or even its dreadful crisis management ― though those are errors that will cost it more than $2 billion in repairs and lost sales this year.

Although the “recalls” seemed sudden, the evidence has been piling up. According to a report from Massachusetts?鄄based Safety Research & Strategies (SRS), a consumer?鄄advocacy group, there was a spike in the number of unintended?鄄acceleration incidents in some Toyota vehicles in 2002, about the same time that Toyota introduced its electronic throttle control. The problem was initially blamed on a floor mat or vehicle trim that, if it came loose, could jam the accelerator pedal in an open?鄄throttle position. That was followed by the first of several National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, in 2003, and two small recalls in 2005 and 2007. But accidents mounted, and last November the company had to take back nearly 3.8 million U.S. Vehicles to address the problem.

There was more to come. In early February, Toyota voluntarily recalled more than 400,000 Prius and other hybrid cars―this time, to update software in the antilock brake system that could cause a glitch if the car traveled over a bumpy surface. The Lexus is Toyota’s top?鄄selling luxury model―bad enough―but the Prius is its darling, a car that demonstrated the company’s ability to solve technical issues that kept other automakers from fielding gas?鄄electric hybrids, at the same time clinching Toyota’s green cred.

The Little Company That Could

So what happened? What went awry at the car company whose widely admired Toyota Production System (TPS) had made it the paragon of the art of manufacturing?

The reputation for quality that Toyota has damaged in just a few months took decades to build. Though Toyota was founded in the 1930s, its climb to global prominence started after World War Ⅱ as the company became one of the exemplars of Japan’s miracle ― the creation of a successful, technologically advanced economy out of the ashes of war. In the 1950s, the company experimented with ways to manufacture cars more efficiently. The production techniques of American car companies―with heaps of stored components awaiting assembly, and ample machinery to do it ― was just too wasteful and expensive for Japan. Toyota had to learn to do more with less. The result was TPS ― or, more generically, lean manufacturing.

One organizing philosophy behind TPS is popularly ascribed to a concept called kaizen ― Japanese for “continuous improvement”. In practice, it’s the idea of empowering those people closest to a work process so they can participate in designing and improving it, rather than, say, spending every shift merely whacking four bolts to secure the front seat as each car moves down the line.Sakichi Toyoda developed another concept, jidoka, or “automation with a human touch.” Think of it as built?鄄in stress detection. At Toyota, that means work stops whenever and wherever a problem occurs. (Any employee can pull a cord to shut down the line if there is a problem.)

That was the idea. But the fact that Toyota has produced so many imperfect cars is evidence that its system developed faults. Management experts like John Paul MacDuffie, a co?鄄director of the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, place the blame on the company’s headlong growth in the past 10 years.

In 2000, Toyota produced 5.2 million cars; last year it had the capacity to make 10 million. Since 2000, when Toyota had 58 production sites, it has added 17. In other words, Toyota has added the capacity of a company virtually the size of Chrysler in a stated ambition to become the world’s No. 1 auto company.

But rapid expansion puts enormous pressure on any company’s ability to transmit know―how and technology, especially over long distances and across national cultures. When Toyota opened its Georgetown, Ky., plant in 1988, hundreds of work?鄄team specialists and other experts were transplanted from Japan for several years to make sure the new plant fully absorbed the Toyota way. That kind of hand?鄄holding may still be possible, but it isn’t as easy. How can that be fixed? Says Spear: “The big deal is this question. Does an organization know how to hear and respond to weak signals, which are the problems, or does it have to hear strong signals? You have to listen to weak signals. By the time you get to strong signals, it’s too late.”

When weak signals started coming out in 2002, Toyota’s top management wasn’t listening. By then, the heroic stage of Japan Inc. was over; parts of its business culture had become sclerotic. Compared with the nimbleness seen in Silicon Valley, Japan’s manufacturers and their systems began to be seen as inflexible, too removed from a changing global economy to adapt. Analysts describe a Toyota management team that had fallen in love with itself and become too insular to properly handle something like the current crisis.

How to Lose Influential Friends

For much of the past year, hundreds of Toyota employees in the U.S. didn’t build cars at all, instead attending classes or doing “maintenance” work on half?鄄built vehicles at idled factories in Texas and Indiana. Toyota kept the workers on in anticipation of better times ahead. Now the company is looking at another year of losses and significant overcapacity in North America.

On top of criticism that it has been slow to fix its vehicles, Toyota has wrecked its political cover. Although the company had artfully balanced both U.S. political parties by designing green cars and building them in red states, its goodwill was strained in recent weeks by the decision to close its manufacturing plant in Fremont. The shutdown of the plant in March will wipe out 5,400 jobs and hit hard the more than 1,000 suppliers that work with the factory. “I think they offended the Democratic delegation in California,” says Sean McAlinden, executive vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. The fact that Toyota had to deny persistent reports it was planning to move its U.S. headquarters out of Southern California didn’t help.

The NHTSA, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), did Toyota no favors either. The DOT actually fumbled no fewer than six separate inquiries into possible safety problems with Toyotas since 2003. In each case, the DOT ended the probes with little or no further action. That changed as the tragic evidence mounted. And when Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blurted out advice to Toyota owners to avoid driving their cars ― advice he hastily withdrew ― he more or less forced the issue.

The company has also been trying to repair its relationship with consumers. “We have not lived up to the high standards you have come to expect from us. I am deeply disappointed by that and apologize. As the president of Toyota, I take personal responsibility,” Akio Toyoda wrote in the Washington Post. Lentz, who defended Toyota recently at the Detroit Auto Show, said that while the recall is embarrassing, “it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve lost our edge on quality.”

It’s not too early to say that consumers have not seen the last of massive, worldwide recalls of cars ― in part because car companies have adopted the Toyota approach. Ford’s new and highly praised strategy is to build “world cars” the way Toyota does, reducing the cost of manufacturing by making sure that more of its models share common parts on a relatively small number of platforms, built at plants around the world. That sounds like the epitome of manufacturing efficiency in our globalized economies. But it also explains why the brakes that caused the Prius’ recall are found on Toyota’s luxury Lexus 300 too. It’s a system that all but guarantees that there are no small problems when a part goes bad, only big ones. In fact,global ones.

There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel ― going back to an industry in which every car demands a factory full of specific parts. But as the world’s most famous automobile company has just demonstrated, if you’re in the business of making cars, you’d better make sure your wheel works.

丰田到底怎么啦?

其实也不是太大的问题。至少不是工程、机械,甚至是质量的问题。如果你像丰田那样能生产出高品质的汽车,你就可以在全球汽车行业中高速前进。尽管汽车已经是人们所熟悉的机械设备,但它也是非常复杂的东西。

从2009年11月起,丰田公司就召回了近900万辆刹车和加速系统存在问题的汽车。这个令人震惊的消息,带给人们的不仅仅是公司生产劣质汽车,更重要的是企业在处理危机时所采取的方法。更糟糕的是,这些致命的错误将花费丰田汽车20多亿美元的维修费用并致使其销售额下降。

虽然这些“召回”显得有些突然,但证据早已堆积如山。据报道,一个来自马萨诸塞州的安全研究与战略(SRS)的消费者保护组织称,在2002年丰田汽车就出现过预料外加速事件。也是在这一年,丰田汽车推出了电子油门控制系统。这个问题最初归咎于地垫或车辆内饰,如果它出现松动,可能会阻塞加速器踏板开放式节气门的位置。之后,在2003年国家公路交通安全管理局首次介入调查,丰田公司分别在2005年和2007年小规模召回部分产品。随着交通事故的增加,去年11月丰田公司不得不召回380万辆美国市场上的汽车来解决这个危机。

然而,问题接踵而至。2月初,丰田自愿召回40多万辆普瑞斯混合动力汽车和其他混合动力汽车。这一次,丰田更新了防锁死煞车系统的软件,因为如果车辆行驶在颠簸的路面可能会导致故障。雷克萨斯是丰田最畅销的豪华车型――够糟糕的――但是普瑞斯是它的宠儿,因为它展示了公司解决技术问题的能力,一项使得其他汽车制造商远离气电混合动力的技术。与此同时,丰田也树立了环保的理念。

小公司可以成就大事业

那么到底发生了什么事情?倍受推崇的丰田生产系统曾经成就了它作为制造艺术的典范,现在到底是哪里出了岔子?

丰田在短短几个月内败坏了几十年来建立起来的声誉。丰田成立于20世纪30年代,于第二次世界大战后上升到全球领先地位,并一跃成为日本奇迹的典范――一个在战争的废墟中建立起来的成功的高科技体制。在20世纪50年代,丰田公司尝试了如何更有效地生产汽车。美国汽车公司的生产技术――大堆的等候安装的零配件,以及大量的装配器械――对日本来说,既浪费又昂贵。丰田公司必须学会少花钱多办事。结果就产生了丰田生产系统,也就是,精益制造。

丰田生产系统的背后的一项组织哲学是被我们通常称为“精益”的理念――日语中的意思是“持续改进”。在实践中,它是指授权于那些离工作程序最近的人,使他们能够参与设计和改进产品,而不是那种,比如说,花上一个班次的时间只是在汽车下线的时候去旋紧前排座位的四个螺栓。丰田佐吉开发出了另外一个概念,自P化,或“自动化”。把它看成是内置的压力检测。这意味着无论何时何地发生问题,生产都会停止。(如果出现问题,任何员工都可以关闭生产线。)

想法终归是想法。事实是,丰田生产了这么多问题汽车,说明了它的生产系统是有缺陷的。管理领域的专家们,诸如宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院国际汽车计划机构的主任约翰・保罗・麦克杜菲,把责任归咎于丰田汽车在过去10年迅猛而失控的增长。

2000年,丰田公司生产了520万辆汽车,去年产能达到1 000万辆。自2000年以来,丰田在58个生产基地的基础上又增加了17个。也就是说,丰田新增的生产能力已经抵上克莱斯勒的生产规模。这充分显示出丰田汽车想成为世界第一大汽车公司的野心。

但是,迅速扩张会给任何公司带来传输知识和技术的巨大压力,特别是遥远的路途和跨民族文化。当丰田公司于1988年在肯塔基州乔治城建厂时,数百名工作团队专家和其他专家从日本移居至此几年,以确保新工厂充分吸收了来自日本的丰田方式。这种类型的手把手的操控虽然有可能,但事实上并不那么容易。怎么能解决这个问题呢?斯皮尔说:“大问题就是这个问题。一个组织是否应该知道如何听到弱信号,即出现的问题,并对弱信号做出反应?还有,它是否一定要听到强信号?问题是你必须听到弱信号。等到你听到强信号时,为时已晚。”

当微弱的信号开始在2002年出现时,丰田的高层管理人员置之不理。从那时起,日本公司的英雄时代已经结束,其商业文化已开始僵化。相对于硅谷的敏捷而言,日本的制造商和他们的系统开始被视为缺乏灵活性,也不适应变化的世界经济。分析家们描述了丰田的管理团队:已经爱上了自己,变得太狭隘,无法妥善处理目前像经济危机一样的东西。

如何失去了有影响力的朋友

在过去一年的大部分时间里,在美国的数百名丰田工人并没有制造任何汽车,而是在得克萨斯州和印第安纳州闲置的工厂上课或对制造了一半的汽车进行“维修”。丰田一直让工人们期待着更好时代的到来。现在,公司眼瞅着今年又要亏损,还要面临北美产能相当过剩的问题。

丰田汽车没有及时修理它的车辆成为所有的矛头指向,它已经破坏了自己的政治掩护。虽然公司通过设计绿色环保汽车和在红色州生产来巧妙地平衡了美国两党,但是关闭弗里蒙特工厂的决定使丰田汽车的商业信誉在近几个星期内岌岌可危。3月份工厂的关闭造成了5 400人失业,1 000多供应商与工厂受到重创。“我认为他们触犯了加州代表团,”来自美国密歇根州汽车研究中心的执行副总裁肖恩・麦卡林登说。丰田公司不断地否认它要将其美国总部的汽车研究中心迁出南加州的计划,但这也无济于事。

国家公路交通安全局,作为美国交通部(DOT)的执行机构,也没帮丰田汽车任何的忙。实际上该机构自从2003年开始就对丰田汽车可能的安全问题进行了不下6次的独立调查。但每次调查都不了了之。随着交通事故的增加,这一情形发生了改变。当交通部长雷・拉胡德脱口而出建议丰田车主避免开车时,他或多或少地推动了丰田对此事做出行动。

丰田公司还一直在努力修复与消费者的关系。“我们辜负了您所期望的高标准。我深感失望,并做出道歉。作为丰田总裁,我承担个人责任,”丰田章男在华盛顿邮报上如是说。为丰田汽车在底特律车展辩护的伦茨最近表示,虽然召回是很尴尬,但是“这并不意味着我们失去了质量优势。”

消费者还没有看到最后的、全球性的汽车召回,这不是言之过早――因为很多汽车公司采用了丰田的做法。福特倍受赞扬的新战略,是像丰田那样制造“世界车”,即通过确保大多数车型在相对较少的平台上使用同样的零部件,并以此来降低生产成本。这听起来像我们的生产效率在经济全球化中的一个缩影。但它也说明了为什么导致普锐斯召回的刹车问题出现在丰田的豪华车型雷克萨斯300中。在这样的系统中,只要一个零件发生问题,那就不会是小问题,只会是大问题。事实上,是全球性的问题。

没道理浪费时间做别人已做好的事――回到那个每辆汽车都需要工厂为其制造专门零件的行业。但是,像世界最著名的汽车公司所呈现给我们的事实那样,如果你在汽车制造行业,那么你最好确保你的车轮运转正常。