STM ASSIGNMENT

1) What is the basis of Toyota’s competitive advantage?
Toyota was one of the largest producer in the global industry by beating General Motors (GM). The expansion of Toyota is one of the main achievement of the Japanese Industry in the last century.
The success of Toyota was affected very badly by the economic recession as the banks were facing a very tough time. Due to this recession the banks had to reduce the credit facility and so the consumers were not able to borrow money for purchasing luxury items. This had a direct impact on the automobile industry.
Toyota’s competitive advantages are:
• Mass Production Toyota had a competitive advantage over Ford as it does not use mass production technique for the production of their automobiles. The negative impact of mass production were:
Huge number of inventories has to be store in a big warehouse which would in turn increase the costs, if there is any changes in the settings of the machines then mass production will lead to the production of defective items, by doing the same kind of work the assembly line workers would be careless about the quality and do more flaws. Due to mass production it would be difficult for the company to customize their product according to the preferences of the customer.
• Lesser setup time
Toyota’s main motive was to produce the auto-body parts at a lower costs and in small amount. For this they had to reduce the setup time for stamping out the auto body parts. As the