201–210 of 264 posts
Their ’90s sedans were the pinnacle of cars, so perfect that The Onion wrote their first non-satire piece on why a ‘93 Camry will outlive you and your bloodline. 完璧な車で、誠にありがとございます。 https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's highly dependent upon which country you're in. In the United States, Toyota has a separate brand for their luxury offerings (Lexus), and so what you say is true. But in other countries, those nice Lexus cars are sold as Toyotas.
Yes, I came to say that if I were to buy a luxury car, it would be a fancy Toyota AKA Lexus. I wonder if most people aren't aware of that? And Cadillac is just GM? It's hardly unusual in the American market - I believe it's been called badge engineering for at least as long as I've been alive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.
In the US, Lexus is on par with Merc/BMW/Audi
The Toyota Production System was established during Shoichiro Toyoda's leadership. It is the company's "operating system" if you will, and has made an enormous impact, both in the auto industry and in other fields such as IT. "Lean" manufacturing, a term from Womack & Jones, is based on their research into this. If you want to dive in, here is my reading list for essential books on how Toyota came to build high quali…
Tetsuo Sakiya - Honda Motor the men, the management, the machines Tangential: there are many books on the Toyota system, so that they have stolen the show. I have always suspected that other Japanese factories might have also had interesting production systems but only found the above book about Honda. Honda apparently invested more in R&D and always took greater risks than Toyota. I believe some ideas from there can…
It was driven by the quest to create the best engines and fastest vehicles.
Soichiro Honda had a great love for building and tuning his engines, saying something like, “It will be a sad day if engineers could go to lunch without needing to wash their hands”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.
I disagree. The main reason I buy Apple laptops is the physical reliability... they absolutely make low end (feature wise) models that still have top notch physical quality and longevity, including historically making super bare bones school/education targeted models. I know it's a premium model, but my 2010 Macbook Pro is still going strong with zero repairs other than two battery replacements that took about 5 minu…
My impression is that they've had several years of poor quality and bad design decisions with their laptops. Some models were banned from flights due to battery fire issues [1]. They had keyboard problems for many years [2]. And they've had a lot of recalls [3].
Fortunately the quality seems to have improved with the M1/M2 macbooks.
[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/macbook-pro-flight-ban-everyt...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/apple-settles-macbook-butter...
[3] https://www.macworld.com/article/673631/macbook-recalls-and-...
I had a Toyota. It was a great car, and a real testament to the engineering prowess Toyoda established. I see very clear, very interesting Innovator's Dilemma vibes, though, in how widely they've missed the boat on EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Toyota lose its dominance in the coming decade. It's sad, since the Prius was such a gamechanger. Maybe the passing of the torch here will let them start to catch up.
I'm still in the camp that they did not in fact miss the boat on EVs. We, globally, are still very far off until EV adoption and probably better off focusing on more important things versus directly on EVs. Also Toyota was pioneer in EVs and I think you've discounted that if you're really looked at it on a bigger view of things
It could also be the case that electric/battery tech ushers in new modes of transport that aren't "car", "motorcycle" or "bicycle" thus upending the status quo.
> establishing a culture of quality control that helped Toyota evolve into a world-leading automaker. A lot of the JIT stuff that is so common, these days, was revolutionary, when he introduced it. I'm told that many agile techniques also had their genesis in his work.
I wonder if Deming ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Japan ) contributed to the Toyota Way? A lot of the Toyota Way seems inspired by his teachings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toyota is probably the only brand loyalty I have and yah, I’ll happily keep buying either gas or hybrids from them. I’m in no rush for electric, but when Toyota makes an EV Corolla that’ll be a sign to me EVs are actually ready for normal people. They’ve rightfully gained my trust and their seal of approval on car tech does matter to me.
What do you think of GM's Bolt E(U)V?
> establishing a culture of quality control that helped Toyota evolve into a world-leading automaker. A lot of the JIT stuff that is so common, these days, was revolutionary, when he introduced it. I'm told that many agile techniques also had their genesis in his work.
I am curious how many people are rethinking how aggressively to set up a JIT system in the wake of COVID and the supply chain issues, given it clearly cost many companies an astronomical amount of money in the end. Obviously you shouldn't build your entire company around rare, worst case scenarios, but there should probably be some consideration budgeted in for them IMO and it seems few companies were ready for rainy…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
JIT made sense for Toyota and they took steps to ensure their suppliers were beholden to them (that is they shipped whenever Toyota needed it). JIT doesn't make sense for global supply chains when the suppliers i.e. China or Russia government can impose embargoes at will with little warning.
JIT also works really well when all your major manufacturing centers are an average 3-4 hour drive from each other. 6-8 at the furthest maybe. JIT breaks down over global distances because “in time” and “instant” mean very different things even when moving nearly at the speed of sound. Even if no one embargoed anyone, you can’t beat the laws of physics.
You can stream audio with a 5s delay and 10s jitter if you have a large enough buffer
JIT doesn’t mean instant. It means sizing to the first derivative (rate) and second derivative (jitter) of your f(x) (supply)