Toyota's quality czar has had some "trying" times.
For most of his presentation, Steve St. Angelo stood stoicly behind the podium, stiffly reading the teleprompter with the expected explanation for Toyota’s difficult year, rarely making eye contact with the audience.
Then, the chief quality officer and executive vice president for the embattled Japanese automaker stepped out onto the platform at the Management Briefing Seminars, in Traverse City, and suddenly started speaking directly from the heart about the trials Toyota experienced earlier this year.
“Obviously, it has been a trying few months,” St. Angelo said, suddenly animated.
Few would dispute that considering the challenges that have landed on the back of a company that once seemed to do no wrong.
Since announcing its first recall for unintended acceleration, last October, Toyota has more than 9 million cars to the callback list for a wide range of problems, everything from sticky accelerators to excess corrosion and leaky fuel tanks. It has paid a record, $16.4 million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to reveal defects in a timely manner. Its leaders have been caustically grilled by Congress. Its products have plunged on the quality charts. And it is facing potential criminal charges from two grand juries.
It’s been tough on everyone in the company, said St. Angelo, from senior management to line workers. And some of those plant employees wanted to do something to show their passion for company, so they started writing stories about the company and their work to share with their plant managers. One of the employees decided to compile the stories into a book. All proceeds of “One Team on All Levels” will go to charity.
“Some of these stories would make you laugh, but some would make you cry,” he said. “I’m proud because they did it on their own.”
With sales slipping, despite hefty incentives, it’s clear that the headlines of recent months have begun to chip away at Toyota’s once-sterling image. And the situation could get worse as the maker’s safety record is challenged in court, where several class actions and plenty of other lawsuits will be heard.
But St. Angelo, who was recently appointed to the newly-created quality post in a response to Toyota’s recall crisis, stressed that a key complaint about the company’s products is so far unjustified.
Many critics contend there’s a gremlin in Toyota’s electronic control systems that causes its Toyota vehicles to race out of control. But speaking directly to the audience, St. Angelo insisted that Toyota’s research has yet to reveal such a problem.
More significantly, outside investigations by agencies including NASA, NHTSA, National Academy of Sciences and Exponent Engineering and Science Consulting — which includes a peer-review panel led by Rodney Slater, former U.S. transportation secretary – have all turned up nothing.
“In all those investigations, we have not found a single case where vehicle electronics will lead to unintended acceleration,” St. Angelo asserted. “They went through their analysis so carefully and they can’t find anything.”
Even if the numerous, on-going investigations ultimately clear Toyota’s electronics, it’s unclear whether that will end the company’s crisis, however. The German maker, Audi received a clean bill of health from NHTSA, two decades ago, after facing a similar raft of complaints about sudden acceleration, but it took years for Volkswagen’s luxury subsidiary to recover.
Complicating matters for Toyota, observers stress, are the numerous other recalls and snafus that have been revealed about a company that long led the quality charts. Few expect Toyota will ever be able to fully rebuild its image.