Toyota shut down 12 assembly factories on Tuesday morning local time, followed by the closure of the final two in the afternoon. All 14 factories account for nearly one-third of Toyota’s global output.
Toyota pioneered and continues to use a just-in-time inventory management strategy, which keeps minimum component inventories on hand to cut costs while jeopardizing production flow when supply shortages arise. The source of the issue is yet unknown, however a representative stated that it is “likely not due to a cyberattack.”
In the first half of 2023, Toyota’s Japanese factories produced roughly 13,500 automobiles per day, excluding vehicles made by Toyota group subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino.
The company has not stated how much production would be lost as a result of the shutdown.
The halt comes as Toyota’s Japanese production was resuming following a string of problems. Its operations were harmed last year when one of its vendors was hacked. The one-day outage resulted in a loss of around 13,000 automobiles.
On the bright side according to Reuters, Toyota says it will resume operations at 25 production lines of a dozen plants in its home market from Wednesday morning and add the final two plants from the afternoon, it said.