In your assignments throughout this course, you will build an operations improvement plan (OIP) based on the real-world example of the Toyota Motor Corporation's recent product failure crisis. The essential purpose of an OIP is to provide the rationale and data to support a change proposal for a particular organizational process that could benefit from improvement. It is a formal recommendation presented to an audience of organizational leaders. The OIP contains data-based descriptions of the existing problems and presents ideas for effectively modifying the organizational process. At the core of an OIP are a variety of tools that can be used to both analyze findings and present them for an executive audience.
If you have not already done so, take some time now to read all of the assignments for this course. Each of the first five assignments represents a component of a typical OIP. For the final assignment, you will compile your work to deliver a finalized OIP, incorporating updates and focusing on the message you want to deliver to the organizational leaders (in this case, the leaders at Toyota Motor Corporation).
Note that several case studies and library resources that address the Toyota accelerator crisis have been assigned throughout the course. These materials should give you a starting point for your research, but it will be necessary for you to conduct further independent research on the Toyota crisis in order to build your OIP. The Capella library is a recommended source of scholarly and professional information on the subject.
Activity Instructions
For this assignment, complete the following:
• Using your preliminary research, identify several of Toyota's existing organizational processes at the time of the accelerator crisis. You will be developing an OIP that would replace some (or one) of these processes.
• For each process you identify, write a short summary addressing the following specific topics. Your analyses should be as thorough as possible. Be sure to cite your resources for this information.
o Importance: What is the importance of the process to the Toyota organization?
o Scope: What is the scope of this process (what is the breadth of its reach)?
o Parties involved: What customers, as well as internal and external suppliers, are affected by this
o Process?
o Priority: What is the timeliness or urgency for resolving the issues involved in this process?
o Benefits: What is the overall impact or benefit for Toyota in improving this process?
o Cost: What are the costs to Toyota if the process is not improved?
• Select one of the processes you have identified as needing improvement to use as the basis for your operations improvement plan (OIP). Select a process that lends itself to an in-depth analysis and that is important to the Toyota corporation. Be sure to focus on a process that you will be able to evaluate and address within the scope of your OIP, given the relatively short duration of this course. Take into account the amount of time required to complete the OIP.
• Explain why you think this process should be addressed, focusing on your analysis of its importance to the organization and how the process would benefit from improvement.