The US auto industry came to the brink of collapse in 2008 and has now revived with all the big three posting profits in 2012. One of the important observations of the new automobile industry and its new products is that these are now considered high quality cars, far superior to the old design and old style production.
Toyota was the original manufacturer to use quality as a strategy to build up a business from almost nothing in the mid-50’s to become the world’s largest auto manufacturer in 2010. Founder Shinji Toyoda and his chief engineer Ohno developed the Toyota Production System to eliminate waste and build quality. They incorporated every aspect of Total Quality Management in their production at a time when American manufacturers claimed that quality was costly and TQM was too expensive to implement.
Discuss the aspects of quality versus cost in manufacturing strategy.
