BookTitleToyota Tsusho 70-Year History

Summary

Toyota Tsusho 70-Year History

the management of Toyota Group companies and have become the driving forcebehind the group’s development.Whether inventing looms or manufacturing, Sakichi emphasized a can-doattitude. He passed that attitude, born of the various struggles he faced, on to hiseldest son, Kiichiro. Today, it is enshrined as the focused,“on-site, hands on, intouch”philosophy of the Toyota Group.2 Kiichiro Toyoda’s Resolution to Manufacture AutomobilesIt was after the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 that the usefulnessof automobiles became widely known in Japan. The use of US-made vehicles fromFord and GM in recovery operations after the earthquake expanded the image ofautomobiles as a convenience, and demand rose. The market was controlled notby domestic manufacturers, but by Ford and GM, who built assembly plants inJapan and began manufacturing passenger vehicles and trucks. It is not that therewere no companies that took on the challenge of domestic production, but mostwho did were discouraged, and US-manufactured vehicles made up almost 100%of the Japanese market.One person who felt this situation was an impending crisis was KiichiroToyoda. When visiting the U.S. and Europe for observation, Kiichiro saw thatvehicles were widely popular in the U.S. and European society and that they werebecoming the transportation means of the masses. He dreamed of taking on thechallenge of automobile manufacturing. Not optimistic about the future prospectsof the main business of looms and spinning machines, in September 1933 Kiichiroestablished the Automotive Production Division within Toyoda Automatic LoomWorks and began working on the prototype of the vehicle he dreamed of building.Kiichiro ToyodaModel A1 Passenger Car3 Sales Become an IssueWithout sufficient experience, facilities, or technology for automobilemanufacturing, the first attempts were a series of trials and errors. But after abouttwo years, in 1935, a passenger vehicle prototype was created. However, since thegovernment requested the manufacture of trucks and buses for reasons of nationalpolicy, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works produced trucks alongside its passengervehicles. Kiichiro decided to build a dedicated factory for automobile production.The Kariya plant was built in 1936, and then the selection process began for thesite of the next plant Toyoda Automatic Loom Works planned to build, in Koromo.The first trucks manufactured at the plant had quality issues, but little by littlethey were improved. However, the fledgling automobile business had one glaringweakness. Personnel at Toyoda Automatic Loom Works had no experience inselling automobiles and no idea how to sell trucks. The establishment of a salesorganization and sales method became a major issue facing Kiichiro.Hinode MotorsHistory35