Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest carmaker, is adding more product-quality field offices in the U.S. and Canada to speed investigations of vehicle defects after its worst recall crisis. A new office is planned for Denver.
The company will open seven more North American field-service offices, bringing the total to 21, including one being set up in San Francisco this month, Dino Triantafyllos, vice president of Toyota’s U.S. quality division, told reporters Thursday in Toyota City, Japan.
“These steps are more than fixing past mistakes,” Triantafyllos said. “It’s also about overall quality improvements.”
Toyota is working to regain its reputation for quality after recalling more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for defects linked to unintended acceleration. Stepped-up efforts to boost quality also come as the carmaker prepares to recall 270,000 Lexus and Toyota cars for a flaw that may cause engines to stall and faces further questions from a U.S. congressional committee about vehicle safety.
The automaker’s field-service offices will each focus on specific problems, Triantafyllos said, without saying what the budget is for the operations.
High-altitude issues and sport utility vehicles will be addressed in Denver; hybrid issues in the San Francisco office; heating, cooling and ventilation in Jacksonville, Fla.; and trucks and chassis components in Houston, he said.
The company “will spend whatever we think is necessary” for quality-related operations, said Hiroaki Sunakawa, general manager of Toyota’s customer quality engineering division.
