Perhaps a Detour, Toyota?

Moving Forward.

Quiet an appealing slogan as long as the arrow is pointing in the right direction. In the case of Toyota, our Asian manufacturing friends, the arrow has been pointing in the wrong direction for a while now. The recent outburst regarding possible ETCS (Electronic Throttle Control System) failure is proving to be pretty detrimental to the image of this super reliable, immigrant favorite, "economic" automotive brand. The problem started when a number of "incidents" got reported to Toyota that their cars were mysteriously accelerating out of control while in drive mode and the driver being unable to control the car, in turn causing bad and even fat accidents.

To prevent stock prices from falling and eyebrows from rising, Toyota brushed these issues under the floor mats (no pun intended) and stated that there was some hardware issue that is being addressed. However, in further scratching the surface it became obvious that these accelerations were indeed pretty mysterious and may have some software issues and glitches which can be equally probable for any Toyota vehicle on the road produced around 2002 to current. It is quiet mind blowing to know that the Quality and Reliability Department (every automaker has one) was unable to pinpoint the cause of the problem initially, and waited until a massive recall had to be issued in order to address the issue.

The question of 'corporate responsiblity' is the most applicable one here. The fact that Toyota has all it's auto defects in a super secretive computer somewhere in Japan with no US access is samuraitastically 'non-global'. Being an international corporation, the limitation of the problem solving department being in only one location in the entire globe seems quiet ironic. Consumers pay thousands of dollars to buy a reliable and safe car for their families and an aggressive accident preventing proactive team is the least that we should expect from our car makers. Sure, government regulatory bodies have a huge role to fulfill as taxpayer salary recipients but at what point do corporations not need to be baby-sat? Isn't moral and ethical responsiblity shirked when millions of dollars of profits are made from sales of a product?

We question the ignorance and ineffectiveness of the government sector, but perhaps a much more responsibility and safety conscientious private sector needs to emerge in exchange of high stock prices. This isn't an issue of domestic or foreign manufacturing, this is an issue of global safety and responsiblity that should have been highlighted in the education coursework for the exectives that board the top selling consumer driven industries.

Maybe Toyota got their own slogan misunderstood; moving forward doesn't have to mean just moving up the profit chart.