Pietro Maffi

Dear Toyota,

as agile fan and Scrum Master I studied different Taiichi Ohno books, trying to be inspired during my daily work.

He is the father of the Toyota Production System (TPS), to me the root of the agile movement.

TPS is an integrated system developed by Toyota to organize manufacturing and logistics, including the interaction with suppliers and customers, to minimize cost and waste.

The most important point to me is the customer interaction, this is the point that make a company the market leader or let it become one of the many in the market.

I would like to share my experience and try to tell you (Toyota) that you are losing the customer point of view.

Few years ago, my wife, a Toyota Yaris owner, after many km done and totally happy of the car and its performance, bring it to the assistance for a company recall in order to fix some small issue.

I like this way of working in Toyota, if they found an issue in one of the countries, they fix it and deploy the fix worldwide.

The problem is that the authorized Toyota workshop where we bring the car probably was not so prepared on TPS, they did the work quickly but in order to do that they removed the internal payed bluethoot receiver device optional, and leave it moving around the car…

Then I provided a bad vote to the survey Toyota sent us… I was called and asked to go in the workshop to fix it.

Because of work, my wife brought the car the few months later for the usual maintenance and asked to fix the issue.

At the end of the day the workshop returned the car. During the way back she tried to have a phone call but she discovered that the payed optional was disappeared.

The day after we call the workshop and they say that we asked to fix the receiver movements so they hide it inside the car so that it doesn’t move anymore.

After few years, we decided to buy a new Yaris, we go to a different workshop and asked for a quotation and which are the possible car colors. The sellers tell us on voice: “you have so many colors to decide we are more than a rainbow”.

He starts to set up the quotation and magically the system allow him to select between 5 fixed colors, no other option neither paying.

So, we decided to postpone the purchase.

After few years we had the occasion to have a Lexus car, “the luxury Toyota line”.

Because of the lockdown the car was blocked in the garage for 2 months, when we need to start, we discovered that the one-year old car was not working.

We called the support and Toyota sent a mechanic… but he was not able to find the battery…

Yes I’m serius!

The brand new UX doesn’t have the battery visible, so I’ve to look in the 600 pages manual to find the procedure to start the car… after a while it was working.

We had half an hour trip, on high traffic road than we have to stop… and magically the cars died again! So, we had to call again the support that came and make a picture of the “missing” battery to be ready for the next customer.

The cars start finally and we had a long trip to recharge a bit the battery and now it seems to work… but… if we select the EV button a message appear saying the hybrid battery was not charged.

Then I called the Lexus support again and they proposed to bring the car in a workshop… I agree and they reported me I’ll be called by the workshop. After few days without any call, I called directly the workshop and they reported because of a missing person I’ll be recalled.

Then I wait few days again without success… so I wrote a message using the MyLexus web site to the Lexus support…

The day after I got an email from Lexus support saying that they received my message but it was only few word… the problem was that the web site cut my message leaving only few words.

I replied the email and I was promptly called; I explained the problem and they reported me I’ll be called from the workshop.

I wait few days and then I lost a call… the day after I recall that number and because of the person who call me was not in the office, I’ll be called in the afternoon.

In the late afternoon because of the missing call, I called again and the person told me that she needs to know which is the closer workshop I want to go… I tell her and she reported me than I’ll be called form the usual workshop…

Then after two weeks with the issue we are still waiting for a contact.

I would ask than where is finished the customer first motto?

Where is the continuous improvements in order to have satisfied customers?

I growth as agilist, thinking always I have to change, improve my daily work in order to have satisfied customer.

How can I consider this way of working a good approach to the customer?

I forgot to mention during one of my contanct, I get a sentence like “the xxx showroom is really big so they are not so efficient”.

This break my leg… how can Lexus (the luxury Toyota line) accept that the customer are put aside respect of efficiency in doing work? You are saying that if I’ll call Mercedes workshop they will leave me with the new car in the garage waiting for… the right management?

I feel really sad, and for sure I will consider before talking about TPS when I’ll join new agile class room.

I know this may be a corner case, but when the problem are growing and the sensation that the customer attention slow down, I think at TPS top sentence: “Customer focused”

Source: https://txemainlogisticsworld.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/toyota-production-system-tps