Toyota’s Ethics and Quality Assurance

Introduction

Ethics and Quality are cornerstones for sustainability and the economic performance of Toyota and other entities within their supply chain. The two play a major role an in Toyotas strategic plan; they are woven in the very fabric of the culture of the organization; and they are integrated in risk management as a part of the contingency plan. This paper seeks to highlight Toyota’s concepts of ethics and quality; their continuous benchmarks for improvement as well as their use of knowledge management throughout their supply chain.

Ethics in the Supply Chain

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As part of my analysis of Toyota’s underlying concept of ethics for supply chain management, the following is five essential values implemented by Toyota:

1. Contribute to the development and welfare of the country by working together, regardless of position, in faithfully fulfilling your duties;
2. Be ahead of the times through endless creativity, inquisitiveness, and pursuit of improvement;
3. Be practical and avoid frivolity;
4. Be kind and generous; strive to create a warm, homelike atmosphere;
5. Be reverent, and show gratitude for things great and small in thought and deed.

These values are the guiding principles for their production and supply system. They incorporate three core philosophies: customer first, employee satisfaction and company stability. They have also worked in defining boundaries of the supply chain both internally as well as externally.

Quality in the Supply Chain

Toyota maintains a commitment by putting customers and quality first, and this means ensuring customer satisfaction through the products and services it offers.

With respect to quality, Toyota implements “jikotei kanketsu”, which is a concept that holds true that defect-free process completion ensures that no defective product leaves any production process. Toyota also strives to preserve and improve quality at the world’s highest level and raise cost competitiveness to support high-quality and sustainable growth. They strive to project years into the future and make intentional earnest steps toward making improvements to each and every process. Total ocus and commitment on these ideas has made possible steady well-documented processes, Toyota’s ability to offer the highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost, and getting it there in the shortest lead time.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge can be defined as a synergy framed from experience, values, data, evaluation, and expert insight. Knowledge management is a multi-discipline within an organization that makes the best use of knowledge by making it available, sharing it with everyone, and making sure that it is structured in a highly formalized system in an effort to achieve its stated goals and objectives.

Toyotas knowledge management strategy focuses on reducing cost risk, leveraging existing assets to reduce cycle time, improve decision making, develop innovative technology faster, develop solutions to problems quicker, and to increase versatility within the workforce.

References

1. Bozarth, C. , & Handfield, R. (2008). Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management (2nd ed. ). New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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