Toyota Efficiency Gains Spread Through the Auto Industry
The car industry has had a rough ride over the past few years. The big three Detroit companies have struggled with bankruptcy and even market leader Toyota was hit with reliability concerns last year.
This week however the industry has shown signs of bouncing back off the back of higher quality vehicles that can sustain a profitable price for the industry. Bloomberg report that sales have returned to strong levels after some positive results from the annual J.D. Power & Associates dependability survey.
The biggest strides in the industry have come from Japanese market leader Toyota, who had three brands in the top five. The quality improvements were made across the board however, with 25 of the 32 brands covered in the survey showing improvements in quality.
The news will be particularly pleasing for Toyota, who have traditionally led the way on quality of manufacture off the back of their lean manufacturing system that has since been adopted by much of the industry.
Noted Toyota watcher Jeffrey Liker wrote last year, after the company suffered recalls on thousands of cars, that the company was still the industry leader in terms of quality and reliability of vehicle.
The industry is hoping that new technologies such as voice recognition systems and touch screens, allied with better fuel economy will lure people back to showrooms.
GM's biggest stride was with its luxury make Cadillac, whose owners reported 20 percent fewer problems per 100 vehicles from last year's study. The brand leapfrogged to 3rd in the J.D Power study, behind only the Toyota Lexus and Porsche Cadillac.
Toyota continued to lead the way however. “Boosting confidence among consumers, particularly with a fleet that is 10.8 years old, is another way to get them off the fence and into showrooms,” Bob Carter, Toyota's group vice president of U.S. sales, said.
However the survey did not include many of the models that were recalled during the last 12 months, when over 10 million Toyota cars were recalled to fix defects related to the accelerator pedal.
Will you be buying a new car this year? Do studies such as this motivate you to head to the showroom?
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