The Toyota Production System (TPS) empowers any worker on the production line to stop production for any suspected problem on the production line, by "pulling the andon cord" .
So why the problems of the runaway Toyotas? There is a perception that Toyota has been tardy in investigating problems - http://nyti.ms/c29NS2. I suspect the andon cord has not been "extended" to customer support.
As its name says, TPS is a production system. It includes upstream processes of Toyota's vendors and the famed JIT. But does it extend to customer support? Will customer incidents result in the andon cord being pulled? News reports, like the one referred to above, seem to indicate, not.
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