yeah **** them. I'll never buy there again after they pulled that ****.

 

It would be nice to see a statistical break down of the global automotive markets, to see what regions Toyota is gaining ground in and what regions GM is loosing ground in, and vice versa.

I assume GM is still #1 state side, and is in no danger of loosing that here?

 

Just curious what you are talking about. I worked for CC when they switched from comissioned to hourly. I know a lot of guys who got fired from it. If that is what you are talking about then I don't see the problem.

CC's model was old and outdated that is why they lost out #1 to BB, who I have also worked for. BB, IMO, has TONS of things it could learn from CC. In terms of internal communication, distribution, and managerial roles CC wins hands down over BB. BB is more profitable and therefore bigger now because it was on a winning streak, attracted a different demographic, and had lower overheads and fixed costs.

 

I agree with you. I think the Toyota will be put under a microscope and wont be able to hold up to the myth. I acutually perfer GM drop down for a little while until the new product is out so they can fly under the radar a bit. Let Toyota catch hell for their new "gass guzzler" full size while GM gets back on their feet.

Or do you think Im off on this?

 

Absolutely.

 

You think . Great, more fact based on opinion!!!

Now go join the rest of the media and biased general public!!!

 

A global breakdown would be interesting to see.

If things keep going as they are, GM is #2 in NA in probably 5 years. Figure they bottom out at 20% marketshare, Toyota steals 1-2 percent from each of the Big 3 and that's all it would take.

Probably not a bad thing, because GM NA never makes any money and has a lot of fat which can be cut.

 

Profit is more important than who sells the most units.

When your at the time there is only one way to go.

 

Hence why I said "I think"

I'll bet if one was ambitious enough one could dig up the appropriate studies. Or you could look at longer term resale values, a good indication of how long a car is expected to last. I do have a fair bit of first-hand experience with Toyotas of the early 90s vintage, and (aside from rust) they hold up extremely well, much better than any GM I've owned of a similar age.

I agree there's still a public and media bias in favour of Toyota, but it was hard earned. When GM can produce a lasting track record like that, then they'll deserve to be put on equal footing with Toyota. GM saying they've turned the corner plus producing a few decent products does not make them immediately deserving of a quality reputation equal to Toyota's.

 

I'm not sure where you're going with this. Toyota is light-years ahead on one count, and taking over leadership on the other.

And to a certain degree you need volume to get the profit. It's easier to make X billion profit on 10m unit sales than it is on 7m unit sales. GM continually allowing its marketshare to sink while still maintaining most of its fixed costs is not going to create record breaking profits.

 

Thought I'd post this here.

http://www.lean.org/040407_eletter_sample.html

Why Toyota Won and How Toyota Can Lose

Simon & Schuster has just re-issued The Machine That Changed the World, which Dan Jones, Dan Roos, and I co-authored 17 years ago. Doubtless, our publisher has noticed the current Toyota boom when any book with "Toyota" on the cover sells.

Fortunately, Machine is still the best description of the complete Toyota business system – product development, supplier management, dealing with the customer, fulfilling orders from raw materials through production, and management of the global enterprise. It still has a story to tell. As new CEO Alan Mulally remarked to Ford employees when he arrived in Detroit last fall, it is the best summary of why Toyota is winning.

But in fact Toyota has already won. It's just a matter of totaling units sold and revenues during 2007 to know exactly when to transfer the industry leader's jersey from GM to Toyota. Much more important from a business standpoint, Toyota won the profitability race years ago.

The interesting question for the future is not the precise day Toyota wins but how Toyota can lose. The conventional wisdom is that it may fumble on quality (as evidenced by recent recalls) or go soft on costs or stumble in trying to make Lexus a truly elite brand or fail to gain a stable production and sales base in the emerging markets of China and India.

And these could happen. But if they do they will be symptoms, not the root cause. Toyota's real challenge for the future is to introduce and sustain lean management and lean leadership at every point in a rapidly growing organization.

It's sobering to realize that many new employees at Toyota read Jeff Liker's The Toyota Way and Jeff and Dave Meier's The Toyota Way Field Book (which every lean thinker should read as well) to try to understand the company they have joined. Toyota's traditional way of creating managers by hiring them straight from high school or college and carefully coaching them over many years to become seasoned Toyota-style leaders is being severely strained by Toyota's breakneck growth rate. There are too many new pupils and not enough mature teachers as Toyota opens new plants, engineering centers, and supplier development groups across the world.

Toyota's great risk, the way it can lose, is that its new managers and the managers in its new suppliers will revert to the old, mass-production mentality of the companies or schools they have come from. If this happens, Toyota's management performance will regress toward the mean. Instead of moving the whole world to embrace lean management, Toyota will become just another company. And that will be a tragic failure for us all.

What does Toyota need to teach its new lean managers? Obviously, the specific methods (tools) for conducting production, product design, supplier management, and sales are important. But these are the easy part. The heart of the lean manager’s knowledge is strategy deployment originating with senior managers, A3 problem solving for line managers in the middle of the organization, and standardized work for primary supervisors near the bottom.

And at every level Toyota needs to teach its managers to utilize these concepts by going to the gemba. There, they need to lead by asking questions about the true business problem, the current condition causing the problem, a better condition (that is, a better process) that could address the problem, who must do what when to achieve this new condition (the future state), and what evidence will show that the problem has been addressed.

This means managing the organization's value-creating processes (value streams) by asking highly informed questions rather than managing results at the end of the reporting period. (The latter is simply another form of end-of-the-line quality inspection.) And it means avoiding a resort to orders on what to do next when matters seem to be getting out of hand.

Issuing crisp orders is the natural instinct of any boss. Indeed, most bosses seem to think that by virtue of their experience and authority, they should be able to solve any problem lower in the organization. But orders from the boss rather than informed questions take away the lower-level managers' responsibility for solving problems. They start a vicious circle in which lower-level managers wait to be told what to do by higher-level managers who are much further from the gemba where value is created and who inherently have less – not more – knowledge of the best thing to do.

Compared with the rest of us, Toyota has one major advantage. It never acquires companies or facilities. It expands by opening "greenfield" operations in new locations. So if it finds that it can't grow lean managers at the same rate as sales it can simply slow down. And my bet is that Toyota will slow down if it senses that its management values are being diluted.

The rest of us face a harder problem. We already own and operate "brownfields" that urgently need a transformation in their management. Slowing down this transformation simply makes us fail faster!

In summary, Toyota can fail and if it does the root cause will be a failure to propagate its management system. We can also fail. And if we do the root cause will be a failure to transform our outdated mass-production approach to management. Thus it turns out that we all face the same challenge!

It follows that all of us in the Lean Community need to learn from each other about the best way to create lean managers and lean leaders. I’m happy to report that sharing our experience will be a key objective of the Lean Enterprise Institute as we begin our second decade next fall. We don’t want anyone to fail.

Best regards,

Jim

Jim Womack
Chairman and Founder
Lean Enterprise Institute

 

I wish people would quit with these Toyota is light years ahead syndrome. Toyota is ahead of nobody (excepting global sales at the present). Toyota machines have not been more durable than my GM vehicles. That's just on owner experience alone (yes, I've owned a Camry and Commodore). My GM car is in a different league, 500bhp and as reliable as reliability goes. Has not let me down once (except for a flat battery issue one day) but my Toyota did a voltage regulator one day which left me stranded.

Both cars served their purpose but the Camry was as boring as boring goes.

 

i'd like to see the reliability of a 10 year old cavalier vs civic vs corolla

edit: including how the interiors have held up

 

Resale value means nothing to how good a car is/isn't . That's based on the great "reputation" import cars have, and the fact that owners believe (and expect) that they are still worth good money ... and most BUYERS tend to agree. It's the ATTITUDE that drives the price up. Why is it that the Matrix/Vibe twins are priced differently, and people will pay more for the Toyota? (perception ).

I betcha they're all crap, unless they've all been well maintained. Otherwise, the "win" goes to the one which was maintained the best. Problem is, back to the attitude/perception I just mentioned above, if people treat their GM like it's just a p.o.s., then chances are after ~10 years, it will LOOK like a p.o.s. And since people tend to treat their import better (based on the belief that it's "better" and "deserves" to be treated better) then they remain in "better" condition over the long haul .

On the flip-side of all that, I've seen a lot of really sh!tty, really beat-up Toyotas, Hondas, and other "popular" imports. I've also seen plenty of examples of "crappy" GM's driving around with SEVERAL hundred thousand miles on them, in good shape, IF the owners have taken care of them.

I'm not saying GM didn't "earn" their bad reputation over the years, but the current attitude towards imports vs. domestics is totally a matter of "perception" at this point ... I strongly believe that GM is turning around, and I also see the imports slipping on their "legendary quality" .

 

I'm wondering where all the people are who laughed at me and flat out told me Toyota would never take the lead from GM in global sales?

I can't remember names now because that attitude kinda dropped off about a year or two ago when I guess people finally started realizing it was coming true.

Not that I'm happy to see Toyota take the lead. I just got tired of being crucified for saying it was obviously gonna happen.