Background of the company

In the year 1933, Kiichiro Toyoda founded Toyota Motor Corporation. Initially the organizaiotn manufactured only trucks and supplied trucks to the Japanese army during the Second World War. However, today it is one of the biggest market players in the automobile sector and produces cars of different categories across 28 countries in the world.

The present organizational strategy has caused immense issues for Toyota. One of the organizational strategy is standardization of business operations wherein the factory workers as well as other staff including managers have to follow and abide a fixed set of guidelines and organizational policies while making any business decision or interacting with stakeholders (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). This is in accordance to the mission of the organization to maintain a uniformity in its lines of products and to ensure that all customers receive the same global support irrespective of the category of vehicles they purchase. Toyota utilizes this concept of standardization to ensure that the customers all of its customers are equally treated by the support staff as well as other employees post sales. However, due to this standardization of work operations at all levels, often the different processes in the manufacturing units as well as other departments within the organization gets repeated making the tasks monotonous for the employees as well as time consuming (Ornetzeder and Rohracher 2013). It also consumes the much important bandwidth of the available resources for tasks that could otherwise have been solved in other innovative ways. This in turn makes the employees as well as the factory workers dissatisfied with their jobs. This is degrading the quality of work as well as the productivity of the workforce within the organization. Newer ideas are not being tried out which has often resulted I client complaints regarding the market trends not followed by the organizaiotn in terms of product innovation and other services.

There were also faults that has been seen in the past in the Toyota vehicles that has again resulted due to the faulty systems such as February 2010, a recall was also made for the hybrid anti-lock brake software, which reportedly had issues in the braking of the vehicles. Some of the vehicles of Toyota, which were the Prius, Prius Plug in, Sei as well as Lexus HS 250h had issues in the acceleration pedal and had been recalled in the past (Laudon and Laudon 2015). The present strategy of the organization does not take adequate measures to innovate the products or improve the existing systems.

Current strategy within Toyota

There are different kinds of obstacles that Toyota has to face while implementing the new strategy to improve the present system. The obstacles as well as the mitigation techniques in order to overcome such obstacles are explained below in the tabular format.

Figure 1: Obstacles to the proposed strategy (Source: As used by the author).

Figure 2: Existing vs. new Toyota vehicle production system (Chiarini and Vagnoni, 2015).

In order to execute the strategies to overcome the present issues within the working operation of Toyota automobiles the management has to ensure that the appropriate actions are taken for the same. Some of the actions that has to be implemented based on the identified issues that organization is presently having are explained below:

• Firstly, Toyota needs to identify the exact customer concerns and the feedbacks should be collected from them using different mediums such as online product surveys as well as the feedbacks they share on online platforms like Facebook as well as twitter regarding the products. Only then, the organization will be able to exactly understand what the customers’ needs, which is presently missing from the different lines of products of Toyota. (Rainer et al. 2013).
• Surveys can be conducted and it should be ensures that a minimum sample seize chosen from among the target audience of the organizaiotn participates in the surveys so that the data can be used for research for the company.
• Secondly, the mangers at each level and departments should delve deep into what exactly is the reason of employee job dissatisfaction as well as acts of vandalism at times. The management should understand and address the grievances of the employee’s first in order to ensure that their productivity and other parameters are improved. Human resource policies should be made more flexible and there should be regular reward systems especially for the sales teams in order to drive their motivation and keep them in a constant process of self-improvement and motivation (Izog and Ogba 2015). This will not only help the company achieve better sales results but also ensure at the same time that the employees are happy doing what they are hires for. The managers should be given the provision to set the targets for the different team members based on their capabilities instead of a preset standardized sales target from the top management for all the teammates irrespective of their abilities. This will allow the managers to access the skillsets of the different teammates and put them under performance action plan as well as improvement plans in order to improve their productivity and efficiency in the future (Hu 2013). This not only motivates the employees but also ensures that they do not end up quitting their jobs at Toyota due to job dissatisfaction.
• Another important action that the organization must take on a priority basis is that innovation of its present automobiles. The issues that the organizaiotn has faced in the past such as problematic acceleration pedals have to be addressed for experienced automobile engineers. More highly experienced team of professionals as well as automobile engineers have to be hired from in order to ensure that the quality of the service is retained in the future line of products from Toyota and the customer feedbacks are improved (Galliers and Leidner 2014). There should be an automatic and improved feedback system form the customers regarding product improvement and their user experience regarding the new vehicles that they purchase so the Company immediately gets to know their feedback upon they purchase of the product. The company also has to introduce a new hotline number where the customers can directly talk to the customer representatives 24*7 even after new purchase of any Toyota product.

Figure 3: Strategy execution map (Source: As used by author using draw.io).

The different actions that will be performed in order to implement the new strategy within Toyota will be aimed at the improvement of the different segments of work operations. The right activities that should be selected that should be practiced by the teammates as well the mangers at different levels that are aimed at the enhancing employee job satisfaction, customer satisfaction as well as the overall development of the organization (Galankashi, Helmi and Hashemzahi 2016). A proper model of strategic risk management should be used to counterattack unforeseen market crises as well as stiff product competitor form other competitors (Sierzchula et al. 2014). There should also be a strategically designed performance management program for Toyota that should have the capability of monitoring the performance of each employees based on their daily target and other hygiene metrics such as customer satisfaction scores etc.

Based on the market research that was carried out for Toyota it was identified that in order to increase the sales and the revenue for the organization it was first important for the organization to stop just producing trucks and focus more on the private car segment. It is extremely important for the organization management to understand the importance of identifying the target audience for its different liens of products. For instance, Toyota cannot afford to sell its mid-range economical cars to the audience who are mainly sports vehicles enthusiasts (Fichman, Santos and Zheng 2014). It was also identified that in order to increase customer satisfaction it should also come up with game changing innovative ideas such as attractive offers on purchasing Toyota vehicles.

Obstacles to execute new strategy and mitigation techniques

Figure 4: Translation of strategy to actions (Source: As used by author using draw.io).

The company should also focus on price revisions to ensure that more customers are attracted with the newer prices and at the same time, the company must ensure that the quality of the products should be improved and there are proper after sales support for the vehicles at all parts of the world. It has to be ensured that the reports a regularly generated based on the daily sales form the different parts of the world and the trends of sales are carefully analyzed using proper data analysis tool by the team of experts (Stair and Reynolds 2013). This will help to determine the customer behaviors and patters they use in selecting the brand of vehicles before they purchase a vehicle (Ehsani and Ehsani 2015). Such constructive tasks and activities within Toyota can help the sales and marketing teams to come up with more innovative action plans to increase the revenue form the different parts of the world across the global markets.

In addition, their managers using effective performance management tools can monitor the performance management for the employees and the factory workers working at the different assembly plants of Toyota all across the world. This can be in form of online training and courses that has to be mandatorily completed by the workers and the other employees. They have to ensure that the tasks assigned to them are completed on time and deadlines are not missed since the subsequent reports will be automatically generated on a regular basis through effective information systems which will then be passed on to the respective managers for further performance evaluation. There should be daily team hurled among the managers of the different departments as well as the teammates where the issues faced by the employees can be discussed and the managers can get to know the exact concerns that are being faced by the employees including the factory workers.

The present organizational systems makes use of the existing business models and the systems include a fixed nature of systems or processes which has to be mandatorily followed by all employees thereby causing a boredom for the employees in the job they do. However, the new strategy ensures that the same tasks are performed here too, however in a different and innovative manner thereby ensuring the same business outcome but with increased employee job satisfaction. The existing information systems as well as the computers will be upgraded thereby making the business operations much faster and much of tasks will get automated resulting in faster and more efficient decision making by the managers (Cabigiosu, Zirpoli and Camuffo 2013). Most importantly in the present system, there has not been room for much innovation in the different lines of products offered by Toyota. However, in the new strategy there is huge scope of innovation in the different vehicles due to the presence of the information systems that are customizable for future innovations and organizational requirements.

Translation of strategy into actions

The different projects such as innovations in the electric vehicles as well as development of fuel-efficient cars from Toyota are possible only due to the change in the business operations as well as flexible regulations and policies within the organization. Other projects include change implementation as well as project of roper market risk analysis that is again possible due to the innovative information systems within Toyota. It ensures that the employees and staff are efficiently carrying out the different business processes of sales and marketing, customer services, pre as well as post-sales support as well as other processes of customer satisfaction, promotional activities to increase sales etc., (Aguado, Alvarez and Domingo 2013). The organization structure again plays an important role since the ultimate decision maker for the approval and implementation of any new change is up to the chief executive officer of Toyota. There are different kinds of ethical issues, which run through the different hierarchical levels within the company such as acts of employee vandalism and other issues, which can all be eliminated, and a transparency maintained by the proper use of the information systems within the business operations of Toyota. Strategic resource management can also be done using proper information systems and research by the team of experts regarding the resource allocation and utilization among the employees (Atalay, Anafarta and Sarvan 2013). The role of the stakeholders such as the third party companies tied up with Toyota as well as the different logistics providers can be properly managed by the efficient business tools as well as management information systems within the operations of Toyota.

The changes that will be incorporated by Toyota within its work culture has been communicated to the employees including the different stakeholders and the factory workers by means of meetings. Email notifications regarding the constant updates of the different phases of the lifecycle of the change has also been communicated to the managers and teammates of the different departments from time to time (Yang and Yang 2013). The employees have also been trained on the new technologies and information systems, which will replace the existing systems. There have also been different feedbacks from the employees in the different departments especially from the sales and marketing teams regarding the different parameters that reconsidered in the new strategy regarding the promotion of the newer lines of products from Toyota (Steinhilber, Wells and Thankappan 2013). Data from the online surveys as well as the customer surveys have been used to amend the changes in the new strategy based on the feedback from the managers of the different levels and the changes have been tested and verified before final implementation with the earlier existing strategy prior to roll out.

Alignment between actions and strategies

Figure 5: Environmental Analysis of Toyota (Source: Created by the author).

• Toyota insists on knowing its suppliers.
• The company has a compliance oversight committee that has dedicated team of professional to ensure that the employees meet the organizational standards and regulations.
• Toyota employees believe in not getting overwhelmed even when it grows.

• No employee reward system to recognize their achievements in work place.
• No flexibility in present system and inefficient customer support across the world.

Conclusion:

Therefore, it can be concluded for the above report that even though Toyota has seen immense success in the recent past in its different line of products there are still different areas of improvement that should be properly addressed by the management. Customer satisfaction should be improved by the effective usage of the customer relationship management software as well as data collected form the customer feedbacks and online surveys regarding the user experience.

Some of the significant recommendations for Toyota motors are stated below:

• Toyota should stick to the widely known Toyota production system that stresses on the importance of the quality of the vehicles.
• Adequate staff training on quality testing.
• Toyota should focus more on manufacturing hybrid and fuel-efficient car and especially in the Asian markets.

References:

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