OTTAWA, Ontario — According to Stephen Beatty, Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc. (TCI), if you have to deal with the pain and suffering of a major challenge, you might as well learn something from it. In other words, don't let a good crisis go to waste.
To give a sense of what the company “gained” from rising to the meet the challenge of a recall-laden 2010, Beatty and his TCI colleague, Sandy Di Felice (Director of External Affairs), hosted a group of auto journalists in this city in late November, to go over Toyota’s latest moves in the areas of safety and quality.
More Safety & Quality Staff
“We assigned more than 1,000 more engineers to our technical division this year,” each with specific quality mandates,” said Di Felice, adding that the increase was only part of the upgrade to staffing initiatives.
The others include: a Global Quality Committee; a North American Quality Task Force charged with quickly identifying and prioritizing and executing safety related actions; Swift Market Analysis and Response Team (SWIFT), deployed where ever needed within 24-48 hours to quickly identify and report potential safety issues to the Task Force; Product Quality Field Offices (2 in Canada, 7 in total across North America), purported to represent the “voice of the consumer” on safety and quality; and a Canadian quality engineer actually stationed in Japan.
New Brand Mantra
Previously, Toyota’s brand positioning manta was “Quality, Dependability, Reliability.” The new mantra is, “Quality, Safety, Sustainability.”
Beatty characterizes the switch as not so much a change, but a re-confirmation of core values that were always part of Toyota DNA: “We compete on a number of areas besides quality and safety, and sometimes you can forgot about those core values.”
The new positioning is already evident in Toyota advertising; the two most recent campaigns flaunt Camry’s braking performance, and the new Driving Simulator at Toyota Japan, which moves around by robotics to simulate every aspect of a vehicle in motion.
But Toyota’s main safety move of late, is making standard a suite of six “active” safety systems on all of its 2011 vehicles — the first full-line automaker to do so.
Called the STAR Safety System, it includes VSC (vehicle stability control), TRAC (traction control), ABS (anti-lock braking system), EBD (electronic brake-force distribution (EBD), BA (brake assist), and SST (smart stop technology)
Safety, plus info
According to Beatty, equipping cars with the latest and greatest safety features “are only half of the equation… the second part is telling people what we’ve done.”
“The pace of new technologies has run ahead of the public’s knowledge and understanding of those systems.”
The automaker cites a 2006 Transport Canada survey, which revealed that 60 percent of respondents were totally unaware of the advantages and availability of stability control.
Beatty feels that all manufacturers need to step up to the plate, to help educate the driving public about safety systems and how they work.
For its part, Toyota Canada will feature more safety messaging in advertising and social media, work with other stakeholders (such as the Traffic Injury Research Foundation), undertake more dealership point-of-sale training, and develop more safety material on its website (check out the new safety section on www.toyota.ca).
“If this (safety) knowledge is lacking, it is our responsibility to take on the job,” said Beatty. “It will become a very important part of the brand positioning of Toyota as we introduce more and more systems. We know we have that role to play.”
To give a sense of what the company “gained” from rising to the meet the challenge of a recall-laden 2010, Beatty and his TCI colleague, Sandy Di Felice (Director of External Affairs), hosted a group of auto journalists in this city in late November, to go over Toyota’s latest moves in the areas of safety and quality.
More Safety & Quality Staff
“We assigned more than 1,000 more engineers to our technical division this year,” each with specific quality mandates,” said Di Felice, adding that the increase was only part of the upgrade to staffing initiatives.
The others include: a Global Quality Committee; a North American Quality Task Force charged with quickly identifying and prioritizing and executing safety related actions; Swift Market Analysis and Response Team (SWIFT), deployed where ever needed within 24-48 hours to quickly identify and report potential safety issues to the Task Force; Product Quality Field Offices (2 in Canada, 7 in total across North America), purported to represent the “voice of the consumer” on safety and quality; and a Canadian quality engineer actually stationed in Japan.
New Brand Mantra
Previously, Toyota’s brand positioning manta was “Quality, Dependability, Reliability.” The new mantra is, “Quality, Safety, Sustainability.”
Beatty characterizes the switch as not so much a change, but a re-confirmation of core values that were always part of Toyota DNA: “We compete on a number of areas besides quality and safety, and sometimes you can forgot about those core values.”
The new positioning is already evident in Toyota advertising; the two most recent campaigns flaunt Camry’s braking performance, and the new Driving Simulator at Toyota Japan, which moves around by robotics to simulate every aspect of a vehicle in motion.
But Toyota’s main safety move of late, is making standard a suite of six “active” safety systems on all of its 2011 vehicles — the first full-line automaker to do so.
Called the STAR Safety System, it includes VSC (vehicle stability control), TRAC (traction control), ABS (anti-lock braking system), EBD (electronic brake-force distribution (EBD), BA (brake assist), and SST (smart stop technology)
Safety, plus info
According to Beatty, equipping cars with the latest and greatest safety features “are only half of the equation… the second part is telling people what we’ve done.”
“The pace of new technologies has run ahead of the public’s knowledge and understanding of those systems.”
The automaker cites a 2006 Transport Canada survey, which revealed that 60 percent of respondents were totally unaware of the advantages and availability of stability control.
Beatty feels that all manufacturers need to step up to the plate, to help educate the driving public about safety systems and how they work.
For its part, Toyota Canada will feature more safety messaging in advertising and social media, work with other stakeholders (such as the Traffic Injury Research Foundation), undertake more dealership point-of-sale training, and develop more safety material on its website (check out the new safety section on www.toyota.ca).
“If this (safety) knowledge is lacking, it is our responsibility to take on the job,” said Beatty. “It will become a very important part of the brand positioning of Toyota as we introduce more and more systems. We know we have that role to play.”