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Current Awareness Bulletin (CAB)

17th February 2010

Dear Member,

Flipping heck. I’ve been planning for ages to buy a Toyota Prius this summer, just as soon as I’ve finished paying for my old car. Not a new Prius, the Jinks family coffers don’t stretch that far, but one a few years old.

Over time I’ve carefully convinced She Who Must Be Obeyed that hybrids are not eye-poppingly scary technology and that the Prius in fact tops several reliability charts. It was pretty much in the bag and then Toyota go and drop the bombshell of mass recalls for sticking accelerators – followed by a recall for brakes on new model Priuses.

Now I have a serious job on my hands. ‘Only the most obsessional person would still be buying a Prius’, growled my beloved, together with a few other home truths.

I asked you in last weeks survey whether Toyota would bounce back from its recall problems and 88% of you guys said yes as they are still leaders in manufacturing processes. I agree they are still one of the very best produced cars with an outstanding supply chain process. But the Toyota brand has been damaged and Toyota have a lot of work to do to restore their image.

The really interesting thing is that some of the accelerator pedals that are subject to recalls are in fact supplied by a contractor, CTS Corp. (Though not, just to clarify things, not all and not Lexus cars or vehicles produced before 2005). Here we’re getting into a whole area of operations management that has some of us end to end supply chain boffins all excited, but is an alien concept to most ‘civilians’.......more

David Jinks
Editor

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