The growing demand and the irritating waiting period for its cars do not provoke any hurry on Toyota. Earlier the company had planned to run the third shift for clearing the pending orders. Moreover, the new plant will be free from producing any current models and the existing plants have the limited strength to meet the demand. Toyota Kirloskar’s new plant is slated for the production of Etios [images] with 2 lakh annual units, while the one in production has the capacity of 75000 units.
Toyota’s Fortuner [images] takes a minimum of 7 months waiting period and the Innova [images] muv too joined the waiting group with one month. Toyota Kirloskar has got too many plans to run the show and the one plan is to halt the third shift. The reasons cited for this move are the handicaps in supply from the vendors, facilities regarding infrastructure and logistics, said the company’s DyMD. The infrastructure needs to be exclusive for the night shift, food and transportation are other factors to be taken into account. The major drawback is the little utility of the shift if the pending orders were cleared and also the decrease in demand. Toyota has the ‘just in policy’ meeting the time frame of supply which will be difficult for suppliers and vendors, he stressed. At the same time, he added, the company is not on the verge of losing customers to the competing players. The customers who are accustomed to and keen on Toyota products will certainly wait even for a longer period, he asserted. Those who divert to other products may constitute a little segment, he said and the company has the confidence on its customers’ choice. He cleared the issue related to the brake system in Fortuner that the dissatisfied customers were given the choice of replacing the brake with a new kit. This did not mean the total recall of Fortuner for the brake snag, he cleared.