Large amounts of spare parts made? Manufacturing process? Design differences?
In: Technology
One thing Japanese brands like Toyota tend to be very good at is ensuring that the parts of their cars that are most likely to break with wear/age are designed to be replaced and manufactured inexpensively. These parts also tend to be ones that don’t damage other components of the car immediately when they fail. It keeps maintenance costs down, so more cars stay on the road. This increases demand for replacements parts, so they stay cheap. If a car is cheap to maintain, people are less likely to skip repairs or adopt a “I’ll just drive it until it dies” mentality. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.
They’re not necessarily that much less likely to break than other brands (i.e., they aren’t “invincible” like people tend to say).
One of the foundations of Toyota’s incremental production improvement processes is called “kaizen”.
[Here’s a truly excellent 6-minute YouTube video documenting how Toyota applied it’s kaizen improvements to help speed up service at a New York City Food Bank.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSVPX6jhLfw&ab_channel=FoodBankForNewYorkCity)
I thought this was a really neat way for a big company like Toyota to donate that which it is truly the master of (process optimization) and make a long-term, fundamental improvement to this food bank, rather than just hand out a one-time cash donation.
Adding to other answers, one big thing is the contrast in quality. Chrysler is synonymous in the United States with low quality. Toyota is the opposite. Some tin foil hat theories I’ve heard which I kinda sorta believe is that American car companies are catering more to the rental and lease industries. Make a car that will last well until 60k miles or so. Right after the rental companies sell the car or people return their leases.
Economically it makes a ton of sense. You sell more cars this way. For a owners perspective it sucks. Many people buy cars with the intent of using it until the car dies or have reason to upgrade. These people buy cars maybe once a decade and on top of that, they tend to buy used. So that’s why you see resell value on quality cars to be so much higher on brands like Honda and Toyota versus Nissan and Chrysler.
W. Edward Deming, an american, helped their success immensely.
Variation is the nemesis of quality. Via utilization of SPC (statistical process control) they monitored key points for variation using various data gathering methods such as x bar and r charts, and if parts started getting out of spec. they could make corrections immediately rather than discover the problem after 50 parts slipped out. That is why they are better quality cars, because they monitor variation in the parts they make, very closely.
My brother in law is a paint specialist at Toyota manufacturing in TX and I can tell you from listening to him for the years he’s been working there that their attention to detail is unlike anyone else. Kaizen, and other things mentioned here are spot on. He spent a couple years in Japan on rotational assignment and the processes there are the same as they are in TX. So, I’d say consistency in management, and continuity in production, are also contributing factors to Toyota quality. Fun bit: he was given millions of dollars to reduce the overspray (ie waste) in one of the paint processes, and he succeeding in doing so. So, consider the savings over time by reducing overspray by, say, 8% when you’re rolling a new vehicle off the line every 60 seconds or so (not sure of the exact “takt time” at present).
One specific thing is the position of the fuel injectors. Gasoline is a solvent which is really good at cleaning surfaces like the inside of engines. This is great because carbon deposits build up inside of engines and gasoline can clean those parts so deposits don’t develop.
Toyota fuel injectors are positioned in a way that is conducive to cleaning the piston valves while most fuel injectors are only focused on fueling the vehicle.
It’s partly because Toyota is proud of their “most reliable vehicle” title and provide free service for new vehicles. I take mine in every few months for a ToyotaCare inspection and don’t pay a dime.
Toyota builds reliable cars based on Japanese technology and innovation. However, same can be said for Mercedes as we often have in Europe Mercs with over 1 million km driven on one engine and they still run perfectly.
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