Toyota Motor Corp. is ready to ramp up growth again, emerging from a soul-searching lull brought on by a massive global recall scandal that began in 2009.
The world's top-selling car maker outlined a new "architecture" on Thursday centred on product development and manufacturing initiatives it hopes will be more fail-proof against quality problems, and allow it to keep growing in a "sustainable" way.
The first cars under the system, medium-sized front-wheel drives, will roll out later this year and be expanded to half its line-up by 2020, the company said.
Executive Vice President Mitsuhisa Kato acknowledged that managing Toyota's global scope and model line-up had become an increasing challenge.
"It is making our effort to come out with ever better cars increasingly difficult," he told reporters at headquarters in Toyota city, central Japan.
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He pointed to how President Akio Toyoda had decided to take "an intentional pause" in rapid growth to strengthen the car maker's competitiveness.
The recall fiasco resulted in more than 10 million vehicles being called back around the world, mostly in the US, for a range of problems, spanning faulty brakes, sticky accelerators and ill-fitting floor mats. Toyota paid fines in the US and faced a number of lawsuits.
Before the scandal, it had a reputation for high quality, centred around its super-lean production methods.
Toyota has acknowledged repeatedly that it tried to grow too fast.
There was no single massive change being pushed at Toyota under the new program but rather a combination of efforts to guard against quality flaws while maintaining an edge in product appeal, such as cool-looking exterior designs and safety technology.
The plan that Kato kept calling "TNGA," short for Toyota New Global Architecture, is similar to solutions being pursued by other global car makers, such as Japanese rival Nissan Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG of Germany, which are grappling with the challenges of global growth while maintaining quality.
Toyota said it will also focus on keeping costs down, while taking on the new steps such as using existing plants and facilities to carry out the changes.
Production lines will be simplified and slimmed down, downsizing facilities such as painting booths, and switching to equipment that sits on the plant floor, rather than suspended from above.
