Buyer Analytics

The president of Toyota made some frank and direct comments at a news briefing in Beijing, the last stop on a tour of apology and explanation over the company's quality concerns. Here are excerpted comments from a WSJ article titled “Toyoda Concedes Profit Focus Led to Flaws”.

Akio Toyoda said a key reason for Toyota Motor Corp.'s quality problems was an excessive focus on market share and profits among "some people" in the company, some of his bluntest words yet in assessing the flaws that led to widespread safety recalls.

Toyota's rapid expansion in recent years "attracted much praise from outside the company, and some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit," said the 53-year-old executive, a grandson of Toyota's founder.

Mr. Toyoda said the company's misguided strategic focus warped what he called the "order of Toyota's traditional priorities" in car making: a stress on product safety and quality first, sales volume and cost second. That order "changed" when Toyota began expanding rapidly a decade ago, and aggressively increasing market-share and cutting costs became paramount.

"There was a period we became too profit oriented," he said. Mr. Toyoda said he plans to ensure that Toyota restores the company's "traditional focus" under his watch—indicating he doesn't intend to step down himself over the quality problems.

These frank comments will help Toyota’s culture move quickly back to a customer and quality first focus.