Toyota Has Become Americanized: Is It The End Of The World? Tha Artivist Ponders…

 

Toyota Has Become Americanized: Is It The End Of The World? Tha Artivist Ponders…

“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”

~Henry Ford (Brainy Quote, 2010)

By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist

Just reading the headlines I know I do not have to worry about reading the story…The highly publicized recalls from that once great auto institution and standard bearer has caused the world to become flat again…All the glasses in that glass house has truly broken…It reminds me of a hit taken late last year by Tiger Woods’ once Teflon brand after extramarital affair came into play…In an era where scandals are as common as Brett Favre comebacks, you could at least always depend on Tiger Woods like Toyota to be above the fray and frailties of their peers…Until recently that is…

In my mind Toyota was one of the brands that you always universally associated with quality, strength, endurance, consistency and so forth…Whether you liked, loved or even loathed then, it was mandatory just based on their prolific and proficient output or on the that you respect them…I would pick the Toyota Camry over the Ford Taurus any day of the week…

My enterprising auntie is what I consider a true Toyota connoisseur as she drives nothing but Toyota sedans…She has an Avalon and it runs just as smoothly as the day she first brought it over a decade ago…

Toyota was the true toughness that the once proud Ford franchise aspired to be…It is hard for me to think that such an industry giant as Toyota has settled on being mediocre or rather sub-par, now a uniquely American trait as the current signs of the times do woefully illustrate…

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but a conspiracy realist…And being such I know by instinct that those recalled parts no doubt came from one if not more of Toyota’s North American operations…Ironic isn’t that the things that were made in the U.S.A. are now made in China while things that were made in Japan are now made in the good ole U.S. of A….At least partially…

The American style values quantity more than quality…Where as Japanese culture values honor and integrity, American culture worships at the altar of gluttony and greed…Japanese culture emphasizes service, putting people first before profit whereas American culture emphasizes and places its misguided trust in the almighty dollar first and foremost…

Case in point….Recently a fellow substitute teacher relayed to me the fact that he used to be a safety inspector at a car battery factory for a number of years…When it was ran by corporate America (read the white power structure) he noted that he would get high praises on his evaluation, but he would be reprimanded for being too careful and methodically and his managers (all white) reasoned that he could easily increased his productivity by being less detailed in his examinations…As a matter of fact he and a number of his colleagues were “constructively criticized” for their careful methodical approach and were told to speed it up…In the process that did speed it up and he said he noticed that the profit margin was greatly affected due to the increased number of recalls…

He said after the Japanese brought the company that things vastly improved…He said that the new management (which was all Japanese) held a mass company meeting…They introduced themselves and wasted no time in getting to the point of their meeting…They told everybody in no uncertain terms that the name of their game was quality over quantity…They said they would rather have one well made car battery go out of the factory in one work day than to let many undesirable ones leave the factory causing a major and massive recall…They told them that reputation means everything in business and once your reputation/brand is undermined by a shoddy or poorly made product that it is hard to rebound both financially and perception wise…

My colleague was also impressed how the new management encouraged open interaction and dialogue between employer and employee…For example, he said that the old management was known for wearing dress shirts and ties to distinguished themselves from the employees that they oversaw…This separation created needless tension and anxiety between the management and employees…The new management required that everyone dressed in the same manner to foster a sense of team and unity…

He also stated that they inquired with the workers about the high volume of medical leaves…The workers told them that many of those medical leaves were related to the fact that all of them had to stand up for their entire shifts because there were no chairs on the assembly lines causing chronic back and foot pain…The new management immediately responded by ordering quality chairs to be placed in the plant along the assembly line and other strategic spots the next day…Needless to say that medical leaves went way down and productivity picked way up…

To paraphrase Gandhi you got to be the change you want to see in the world…It is truly unfortunate to see Japan being seduced by the kamikaze lap dance which is the economic sins of America...I always held them in high esteem in the way they were able to recover after WW2…They did it by beating the White power structure at their own economic game and now they have succumbed to the same illness that has engulfed the rest of the Western economic infrastructure…

In the land where everyone is blind who is truly king??? Where do we go from here???

Reference

Brainy Quote. (2010). Henry Ford. Last page update unknown. Last retrieved 2/18/2010 from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_ford_3.html. 

(Ron Herd II a.k.a. R2C2H2 Tha Artivist Is Author Of The Award Winning James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant http://www.jazzlieutenant.blogspot.com. He is also the creator of W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News http://www.weallbe.blogspot.com, Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe & TV http://www.youtube.com/weallbetv. He can be reached at r2c2h2@gmail.com)