时间：2022-06-17 06:36:37
A big change is going on inside Toyota. An insider from Toyota said that the China Department of Toyota’s Japanese Headquarters would be moved from Tokyo to Beijing. When all the functional departments are moved to Beijing, the China Department in Japan will be deleted. This means that all decisions of Toyota related with China will be done in China and the regional headquarters of China will be completely autonomous.
Niu Li, PR director of Toyota China, confirmed this saying. He said that the China department of Toyota includes a business office, a project office and so on. When these functional offices are moved to Beijing, all the functions re- lated with China in Toyota’s Japanese headquarters will be moved to China as well.
Among all multinational automakers, Toyota is the only one which establishes a special department in its general headquarters for the Chinese market. In Toyota’s headquarters in Japan, several similar departments, such as Europe Department, North America Department and China Department, are founded to take charge of the business of their corresponding markets. Moving a department for an area to this area is an unprecedented case too in China.
Niu Li said that Toyota’s former action is that a decision concerning China must be submitted to and reviewed by the Japanese headquarters. The Chinese branch and the headquarters should reach an agreement before the decision was finally made by the president of Toyota China. Now the department is going to be moved to China and any China-related decisions can be made in China without being delivered to Japan. This is the “onthe-spot decision-making” Toyota designed for China, a complete new system for this market.
This new way of localization was started last year, in which two core events happened. The first one is the Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota promoted Kitabatake Shinji, the head of the China Department to the standing vice president of Toyota and sent him to Beijing as the general manager of Toyota China. Meanwhile, he also took the vice president of Toyota China. The three positions of Kitabatake Shinji gave him full authority to make decisions for Toyota China. The second one is that Dong Changzheng, former executive vice president of Benz China, was recruited as the executive vice general manager of Toyota China. Dong became the first Chinese people taking a senior management position in Toyota China.
However, the biggest change is that Akio Toyoda has completely loosened his grip over the affairs in China. Sasaki Akira, president of Toyota China, was deprived of his seat in the board of directors of Toyota but he got the rights of human resources and so on, Akio Toyoda promised that all affairs related with China, including recruiting local talents, could be settled by the Toyota China.
In the sodality of Toyota and Chinese media held before the Spring Festival, Dong Changzheng started his presentation with the sentence “Put on steam for Toyota, my friends”. Then he expressed his opinions about the changes of Toyota’s strategies in China, which sounded humorous but revealed his profound understanding of Toyota’s localization strategy in China. As the first Chinese senior executive in Toyota China, Dong Changzheng did not take the job accidentally. With the increasing authority of the Toyota China, the local talents will gradually be given the major responsibility for the mechanism of deciding and carrying out strategies in China.
Kouseki Tetsuya, who has been the vice general manager of Guangzhou Auto-Toyota joint venture for 6 years, was moved to Japan at the beginning of 2011 as the head of the Business Office of China Department. Presently, all the major positions of the China Department are taken by people having rich experiences of working in China. When the China Department of Toyota’s headquarters is moved to Beijing, the familiar people will return as well and take charge of the decisions related with China.
“Previously, an affair related with Toyota China needs to go through four or five levels before reaching Akio Toyoda. But now, Akio Toyoda, Sasaki Akira and I formed a decisionmaking committee, which is directly responsible for decision making and management in China,”said Kitabatake Shinji.
For a long while, Toyota was considered to be “conservative” in the auto industry. After the biggest recall of products in the company’s history, the weakness of Toyota’s retarded decision making was gradually exposed. The regional markets had no autonomy and could not take actions against crisis timely. This made up Akio Toyoda’s mind to launch a reform to the executive system of China.
In March 2011, Toyota published the Global Development Vision and the Middle- and Long-term Development Plan by 2015. The two files for the first time listed the emerging markets represented by China. Toyota set the goal of increasing the sales to 1.5 million units in China by 2015, accounting for 15% of the global sales. But Toyota only sold 883 thousand cars in mainland China with a 4% year-on-year increase in 2011. Its development pace was much slower than General Motors and Volkswagen. With good performance in China, General Motors and Volkswagen were the champion and runner-up in the global sales in 2011, while Toyota only took the third position.
The success or failure in China determines Toyota’s position in the world and Akio Toyoda knows clearly of its importance. On October 22, 2011, the Toyota China Research & Development Center saw its foundation stone laying ceremony held in Changsu, Jiangsu. Akio Toyoda was present in that ceremony and said that this R&D center will be the largest R&D center of Toyota’s global R&D system. The development of hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars are the major tasks of this R&D center, which is expected to provide services for Toyota’s two joint ventures in China in 2015.
Kitabatake Shinji said: “Our R&D center is established in China to contribute to China. First of all, the results will be applied in China before being spread to the other countries. Then, the technologies of new energy auto should be spread in China with the fastest and most surefooted methods based on the correct understanding of the Chinese policies.”
Previously, Toyota has made several trials about products according to the demand of Chinese consumers. For example, the Corolla Ex launched in 2010 was developed by FAW-Toyota, the other joint venture of Toyota in China. The new Yaris launched by Guangzhou Auto-Toyota was the first model of Toyota that was especially redesigned for one market. The establishment of the R&D center is certainly able to bring complete changes to the product development and distribution in China.
An insider from Toyota China said that the Japanese auto company was deeply influenced by the recall event and the earthquake. Hindered by other things, the plan of upgrading the Chinese branch, which should be done several years ago, was involuntarily postponed by unexpected events. The plans about setting up R&D centers in China and developing models for the Chinese market were formed several years ago. With the spread of Toyota’s localization plan in China, many ideas that are good for its business in China, will be realized in China at a fast pace.
“China is the most important!” Akio Toyoda said in the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Toyota China R&D Center, in Chinese. Whether Toyota can quickly boost its business in China is based on whether it can be fully integrated into the Chinese market, completely rely on the local talents and rigidly make and carry out decisions in this country. Anyway, a grand reform is making its way to Toyota which has been depending on the headquarters’ concentration
of power.