SupervisorySkills
Abstract
Formany years, the Toyota Company has been performing incredibly in theglobal markets with increasing revenues and products over the years.In fact, according to Forbes, as of 2016, it was ranked the 11thworld’s largest public company (Forbes Welcome, 2016). This hasbeen achieved by its commitment to the goals and visions of thecompany which are “To lead the way to the future of mobility,enriching lives around the world with the safest and most reliableways of moving people (Toyota Global Vision, 2016)
However,lately, there have been related problems with great deals of pressureon the different divisions to perform. As a result, employees anddepartmental morale have gone down. My roles as the new VP is torectify the situation by coming up with new policies and goals thatwill bring back the company to its original state. This is not goingto be a downhill task, but with cooperation and support from mysubordinates and superiors, the results with be forthcoming.
Thispaper is going to discuss both short and long-term goals that havebeen set in place the reorganizations set as well as the specificassistance that will be required from the different departments.Also, it will outline the challenges likely to be faced and thespecific leadership trait expected from the directors of the fivedivisions.
Afterdoing extensive research on the causal problems, it was discoveredthat redundant techniques and procedures that were applied over manyyears are still in practice. This means that there no innovations andresearch on the development of new products. As a result, sales werelow, and the general performance of the company reduced. It wastimely discovered that new techniques need to be applied and passedon to the different departments who will, in turn, pass the messagedown to the employees. It was required that specific short andlong-term goals be identified and incorporated into the company normswhile causing reorganization in the way different procedures are runin the enterprise. This also means that there will be challenges thatmust be met with preparedness thus, the directors of the departmentswill be required to have unique sets of skills and traits to enablethem manage and perform the company’s new goals and developments. From the findings, it was concluded that the firm was better placedin the competitive levels with its competitors but lacked newresearch and development techniques. If the procedures elaborated inthis paper will be applied, then positive changes are going to beobserved in the coming years.
Discussion
Severalshort-term goals will be put in place that targets all areas acrossthe different departments. The first and most important is to designa process that quickly identifies problems in the organization and beworked on immediately. What is currently happening is that when thesystem or the employ encounter a problem, he or the system logs theproblem somewhere and continue working- this method of working aroundthe problem should be done away with and a new process that elevatesthe issue to the management’s attention be out in place. Anothergoal is to employ the ‘pull’ system which will curboverproduction in the company. This means that the company does notmanufacture any car until a customer orders for it. As a result,there are zero inventories and the manufacturing lead time is small.The advantage of this system is that the company’s capital is notlying around without utilization and continues to depreciate.
Anotherimportant goal is to eliminate the overburdens applied on theequipment and the employees. For instance during peaks of production,workers and equipment are overstretched, thus causing errors andstress on them. Work should be leveled equally over the time. Inaddition to this, visual controls should be designed and implementedso that problems can be viewed and progress of performance ismonitored and analyzed by the management (Fowler, 2013).
Thelong-term goals of the company should be pegged on three main areasthese include intensive R&D strategies, manufacturing, and socialcontribution. These three sectors will enhance its sustainability atthe global level. One of the primary goals is to strengthen itsorientation of the customers’ requests and demands. This means thatthe client’s likes dislikes and dreams will be the main focus ofthe company in each country and region that Toyota is based. UnderR&D and manufacturing, the company is going to venture into greenand sustainable products like hybrid cars and electric vehicles thatcan be recharged using renewable energy sources.
Thesetasks will require a small team that is capable of achieving thesegoals. As a result, the seven departments will have to be reduced,and some departments merged. The Electrical and the Safety systemswill be merged to form the Wiring Systems Department while the Bodyand Chassis departments will be autonomously merged with theManufacturing departments will be merged to form the Body EquipmentDepartment. This will require a lot of cooperation and patience fromthe different departments. Most of the employees will have to bere-trained on managing complex systems and to learn new technologiesthat are currently being applied in the automobile industries. Forinstance, the development of electric cars and use of visualsdisplays to analyze production and detect emerging problems in theproduction lines. The work of the departmental heads will be toensure that the employees are competent for these tasks.
Theprimary challenge that is going to be faced during this period is themaintenance of high-quality products in the market as the newpolicies are being implanted. However, this is only going to be shortterm as the company, and the departments are getting aligned with thesystem. This will require that the management and departmental headshave a high-level delegation, decision-making, and communicationskills. During these times, quick and sometimes risky decisions willhave to be made, and the information needs to be passed down and upefficiently so that it is implemented in time. The departmentaldirectors will have to delegate the different works to the mostqualified and skilled teams to accomplish the various tasks.
Insummary, changing of company strategies and ways of doing things willhave significant effects on its entire production and performance.However, if the plans are well executed, the company is going to bebetter placed and well developed for its continual sustainability inthe automobile industry.
References
ToyotaGlobal Vision.(2016).ToyoytaCompany WebsiteRetrieved 10 May 2016, fromhttp://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_global_vision_2020.html
ForbesWelcome.(2016). Forbes.com.Retrieved 10 May 2016, fromhttp://www.forbes.com/global2000/list/#tab:overall
Fowler,D. (2013). TheToyota Way.Simplicable.Retrieved 10 May 2016, fromhttp://management.simplicable.com/management/new/toyota-way