Toyota To Fix Development Problems With Extended Cycle;

Toyota, whose previous year models can be found on Salem used car lots, has announced in the wake of its latest recalls to extend its development cycle in an attempt to reduce manufacturing defects. Honda is a major Japanese competitor of Toyota and has not had any recent problems related to manufacturing. Honda models can be found at a St. Louis Honda dealer. Toyota is attempting to rebuild its image after suffering numerous defects that slipped the view of the testing processes that are designed to catch those defects. Volkswagen has not had major recall issues lately and Volkswagen models can be purchased at a Peoria Volkswagen dealer.

The defects have led to a series of recalls on various models, and nearly 11 million vehicles have been affected since the fourth quarter of 2009. Toyota has made its product development process more likely to catch manufacturing defects by adding a new team of "devil advocate" engineers to point out problems and offer feedback for development processes. The team will be added, and an additional month will be added to the development cycle to further reduce recall problems.

It seems that Toyota's rapid expansion and success has ironically led to its latest recalls. A Toyota Executive Vice President said that Toyota's success over the past 4 to 5 years has "been too much in some areas for the company to keep up with." He also added that Toyota's future success will come down to its quality control during engineering and manufacturing.

Out of 1,000 engineers, a team of 100 "devils advocates" will be assigned to test the vehicles from a driver's perspective to find faults before the vehicles hit dealerships. The rest of the 900 engineers will be devoted to quality control issues with the company. The team is looking at the vehicles from the perspective of the customer in order to criticize the performance of the models and identify problems quickly.