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Toyota's North American President Fails his
first congressional questioning period. |
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Toyota's North American President James Lentz testified today, February 23, 2010, before the US Congress about the Toyota recalls and safety issues. Later this week Toyota's real president, Mr. Toyota, will testify. Mr Lentz's background has been in marketing and sales with a graduate degree in finance. He was totally unprepared to answer the questions aimed at him by angry politicians. He seemed to be completely uninformed on numbers. He was asked many questions, but the most telling were from John Dingle congressman from Michigan. He asked very pointed yes and no questions, none of which Mr, Lentz was able to answer. Rather than belabour the point Dingle would move on to the next question quickly after asking Lentz to submit the answer later in writing. There was no delay and the impact was terrible for the hapless executive. One thing that was exposed clearly was how information flows in Toyota. Mr. Lentz told his questioners plainly that all recall's were controlled from Japan and the information flow up until recently has been one way. He said that he had no idea that other areas of the world were reporting similar problems. He had no concept of when and how many. He was the most helpless of witnesses. He had a title, but no information or skill in the area that he was being questioned about so intently. He literally melted slowly into a puddle. As to the current information, he told congress that the 'shim fix' was actually a set of 7 to 9 shims that differed very slightly in shape. These are to be installed in dealerships after the mechanic makes a measurement. He seemed mystified about this too as he was amazed that, when shown the shims, he could not tell the difference between them. According to Lentz, Toyota now has 83 technicians and engineers working on what now amounts to an engineering detective story of international importance. They also have hired a consultant engineering company to help them. Before Lentz testified a woman recounted her terrifying ride as the driver of a Lexus. It lasted 6 miles and reached speeds of over 100 miles per hour. She tried everything including putting the car in reverse, emergency brake and both feet on the brake to no avail. After six miles the car stopped by itself. She and her husband tried to get the attention of Toyota on the incident, but according to her, they ignored her and attributed it to driver error
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Before the testimony of the woman, Rhonda Smith, a Professor, Dr. David Gilbert said that he was able to reproduce an electronic problem in his lab within 3 hours, where Toyota claims to never have been able to duplicate it inside their labs (another outside group claims to be able to see it too). What Gilbert was able to do was foil all the electronic and software and fail safe 'fire walls' that Toyota had erected. He claimed he found at least one of the electronic problems that has bedeviled the auto giant. Toyota to date says that there are two causes, both non-electronic. One is the now famous floor mat difficulty, wherein the mat gets tangled with the accelerator and the other is the 'shim fix', in which a combination of wear and humidity causes the accelerator to stick. Dr. Gilbert also said he was unable to reproduce the problem in General Motors cars or Hondas, which have more stringent safety checks. What started as an unknown and neglected problem that goes back as far as 2001, is now the worst recall dilemma every faced by a Fortune 100 multi-national company. It is a mult-billion dollar issue and it goes to the heart of Toyota's vaunted customer care and quality image.. After reviewing more than 75,000 pages of internal Toyota documents, the congressional committee found that they boasted of having avoided $100,000,000 of earlier recalls. Clearly these safety issues cannot be a a judo match between the clever business people in Japan and the consumer world-wide What we may see from the grandson of the founder of the company will be an interesting exercise in avoidance with a bow.. Don't be surprised, if Mr. Toyota hides behind his language and answers are therefore delayed and halting. This will slowly wear down the less adroit congressional questioners. It would be best, if they would give up the spotlight and let the questions flow be controlled by expert staff people or consulting engineers more versed in the issues and the nuance of the Japanese protocol. |
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