"My decision is to live." President Akio Toyoda's words at the dealer conference in 2020 are not only applicable to this channel adjustment, but also contain business philosophy and management philosophy, which have run through the ten years since he took charge of Toyota and will continue to extend to the future.
Although it is still the most profitable car company with the highest brand value in the world, Toyota will definitely not be satisfied with the performance report for the fiscal year 20 19 (from April 20 19 to March 2020). After all, under the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic and the industry downturn, both sales and operating profit declined. Therefore, at this moment, it is necessary to reorganize the next step and become a willing chess player in Zhang Nan.
As a result, Toyota will not only continue to promote the reform of sales channels in Japan, but also deepen the adjustment of management system. The streamlining of its product line will not only cut Japanese models in half, but also cut global models.
Toyota has always been famous for improving efficiency through "simplification" and "control", so lean production led the second revolution of manufacturing industry. Now Toyota once again raises a knife to itself, and will face another impact baptism from the aspects of product, channel and management system.
After Toyota's global rise, lean production and profitability have become the benchmark for other auto giants to follow. When the global automobile industry turns into a more difficult and confused new stage, Toyota once again takes the lead in finding a new way out.
No matter whether Toyota successfully leads the industry revolution again this time, this sense of urgency has permeated the whole automobile industry, and even the road to breaking all manufacturing situations has revealed its direction in such tempering.
Channel innovation = remodeling blood vessels
There is no doubt that Toyota's internal reform has entered a very critical deep water area. The depth of reform is most vividly manifested in the distribution channel, the circulation blood vessel of the automobile industry.
"My decision is to survive" was shouted by Zhang Nan at an internal meeting in Nagoya in front of more than 700 dealers from all over the country. Indeed, Toyota and even the entire automobile industry are facing a crisis at the moment, and the reform of sales channels is expected to become the turning point in strengthening terminal sales.
How to change it?
As all senior industry professionals and Toyota fans know, since 1956, Toyota has a complicated distribution system in Japan's domestic market. Even after the merger of Vista and Netz in 2004, there are still four brands/sales networks: Toyota, Toyota, Corolla and Netz. For example, "Toyota" is mainly aimed at middle and high-end consumer groups, and "Netz" is mainly aimed at young people.
With the aging of distribution strategy, Toyota's new car sales in Japan have shown a downward trend in the past few years. Compared with the 1990s, the annual sales volume decreased by nearly 40%. However, the number of dealerships has not changed much. For example, the merger of "Vista" and "Netz" only reduced 13 stores (295 in 2005), and the sales of single stores naturally dropped sharply.
In order to boost sales, Toyota decided to gradually abolish the mode of selling limited models by store type, and changed to a new logic of selling all models in a single store, so as to improve the sales concentration of hot-selling models and high-profit models and strive to gain a larger market share in Japan. This means that consumers can buy all Toyota models in any branch in the country in the future.
As early as the end of 20 18, Toyota announced the "sales network transformation" plan related to the short-term and medium-term terminal strategy, aiming at enabling 6,000 sales stores in Japan to realize the combined sales of all models.
Does this mean that changing channels is limited to Japan? It's not that simple.
The channel merger plan of Toyota 20 18 was officially promoted in 2022-2025. However, the implementation date is now advanced by Toyota to May 2020, and the reason behind it is the reversal of the transformation trend of the new four modernizations in the automobile industry.
Just as 20 16 Toyota ended its young brand Scion in the United States, even the channel adjustment of a region or a country reflects the rhythm of Toyota's continuous optimization of operational efficiency and has reached a new node. On the one hand, it will affect Toyota's global layout, and indirectly affect other markets such as China. On the other hand, the deep motivation behind it will also cover the whole world. This time, the driving force is to meet the arrival of electrification turning point.
It is common that the automobile sales network is divided and combined, but for the Japanese automobile market, the blowout period of barbaric growth has long passed, and the volume of the new car market continues to shrink. For this reason, manufacturers other than Toyota have carried out a series of adaptations of sales stores as early as around 2000.
1999 after merging four store series into two, Nissan began to sell all models in only two store series at the same time in 2005, and then merged the two store series into one; Honda also promoted the reform of the dealer system, introducing all models into three series for sale; Mitsubishi Motors also merged the two series early, reducing the vehicle type barrier between the sales series, which is directly related to the sales integration of the whole vehicle series.
Toyota, which has the largest quality inertia and the latest reform, has the deepest thinking and the closest combination with the trend, although it has the latest action. In the era of automobile electrification and intelligence, the division that the brand itself can form in the minds of consumers has been greatly weakened. On the contrary, convenience and interconnection have become the pursuit of young consumers and the key point to enjoy car purchase services.
Toyota, which is promoting grid connection, not only hopes to take this opportunity to simplify channels and control costs, but also further expand the service scope of stores from the perspective of improving user convenience, and promote the best network construction according to local conditions while changing channels. Although it seems that the channel change in Japan has nothing to do with China and the United States, this idea of improving efficiency and optimizing convenience is bound to spread to other markets outside Japan.
Change has never been smooth sailing, and problems still exist.
The change of vehicle sales is a double-edged sword. The sales gap between hot-selling models and unpopular cars will further widen. According to the first-line investigation of Japanese media, the orders of a certain Corolla automobile sales company in April this year were actually concentrated on MPV Alfa and small car yaris, and some unpopular models were almost ignored.
All stores sell the same model, which may aggravate the price competition between terminal networks, which is also the place where Toyota executives are most worried about dealers. However, full competition is also an opportunity to stimulate subjective initiative. Kenhiko Ueno, director of sales representative in Yokohama, noticed this new trend as early as last year. "If the sales are combined, the competition within the group will intensify."
In any case, vascular remodeling, which began in Japan, is imminent. For the China market, should independent brands with uncertain network channels wake up from Toyota's actions?
Not only cut off half the models.
According to Toyota's plan, this sales reform is also a new opportunity to sort out the product line. In the future, the company will reduce the number of 60 -70 models currently sold in China to about 30 models, and the possibility of reducing global models will not be ruled out in the future. The company predicts that the low-growth Japanese auto market will usher in a "post-golden age" with a demand of only 5 million vehicles.
By the end of March 2020, there were 278 Toyota car stores in Japan. If car rental shops are included, the total number of Toyota car shops in China will reach 6000. A Toyota executive who did not want to be named believes that with the reduction of new car product lines, some dealers will launch them in the future, but this is the best state of survival of the fittest and resource allocation.
So, which models are most likely to be cut by Toyota?
In the specific adjustment list, Toyota's MARK X (domestic Reiz) and Estima (domestic Previa) have confirmed that they will stop production at the end of 20 19, but they are still sold on the local distribution network in Japan.
Passive knives are also those miscellaneous "brother models".
In Japan, Erffa's Alphard/ Wilfa Velltire, Noah/Voxy/Esquire and other brother models will usher in new product planning. It is reported that Erffa and Wilfa will have a big upgrade around 202 1 and 65438+February, when the new generation of products will be "merged into one". Noah's "Three Brothers" also plans to change models around 202 1 April. According to Japanese media reports, these three models are also likely to be integrated.
Within Toyota, it is not only the product line that has been "cut off", but also a series of high-level positions. Since 2020, Toyota has made a formal move in the management system.
The post of "Deputy General Manager", which lasted for 38 years, will be officially abolished by Toyota Motor after 1982 implements the new system of production and marketing merger (Toyota Motor Industry and Toyota Motor Sales Merger). The company's existing six vice presidents (EVP, vice president) will no longer exist, and the relevant senior executives will be unified as executive directors, realizing the flattening of management structure, further promoting the improvement of production system and reducing costs.
This is the latest measure of Toyota's structural reform. In the organizational structure, it is necessary for Toyota to communicate directly with the next generation of outstanding talents, and by further reducing the number of management, it will increase the time and opportunities for direct communication with the next level of executives.
In addition, Toyota has begun to attach importance to sending employees to relevant companies for further study as a part of strengthening talent training, rather than a simple and rude "parachute" promotion. Akio Toyoda believes that if employees only stay inside the company, they will easily become "frogs at the bottom of the well" and it is difficult to cultivate compound talents with broad horizons. Therefore, young employees are encouraged to go out of the company and experience different modes of business logic.
It is worth mentioning that this organizational change will also affect other affiliated companies of Toyota. In fact, Tier 1 component companies such as Denso and Aisin Seiki have successively abolished the positions of Commissioner or Managing Director.
"65438+500,000 vehicles" and "3 million vehicles"
At the performance conference in March of fiscal year 2020 (2065438+09-March 2020), Akio Toyoda emphasized the institutional basis of "insisting on domestic production of 3 million vehicles".
As the base camp of global manufacturing industry, Japanese first-line factories shoulder the heavy responsibility of Toyota quality production. Except for the Lehman crisis in 2009 and the Great East Japan Earthquake in 20 1 1, the local new car production has been maintained at more than 3 million. For Toyota, stabilizing the production base of 3 million vehicles plays a vital role in maintaining the upstream and downstream relations including suppliers and dealers and stabilizing the employment of local technical posts.
Take the employment dimension as an example. As early as 200 1, Toyota absorbed 66,000 employees. In the past 20 19, this number increased to 74000. These employees are responsible for the production of 6,543,800 new cars in Japan.
At this week's annual financial report conference, Akio Toyoda gave a speech entitled "The world is China, the world is China, and the world is China".
As the head of Toyota, he stressed that this phenomenon is not worthy of recognition. "No matter the size of the enterprise, no matter how difficult the current situation is, even in the most difficult time, we must grit our teeth and firmly grasp the advantages of technology and talents. Now is the time to unite and support these enterprises. I hope that everyone can support the manufacturing industry and support those enterprises that support Japan and the Japanese economy. "
In the domestic sales field, Toyota has set the goal of "maintaining the sales volume of 654.38+0.5 million vehicles". Even in 2020, when COVID-19 attacked, they still registered 6,543,800+0,550 vehicles for the terminal store. Although it decreased compared with the previous year, its market share increased by 654.38+0.3 percentage points, reaching 49.2%.
In Japan, maintaining sales means maintaining profits.
According to the latest data, Japan bears the biggest profit burden of Toyota. In the fiscal year of March 2020, the terminal sales volume reached 2.24 million vehicles, up by 14% year-on-year, and the sales volume of 16.4 trillion yen was obtained in the profit dimension. Horizontal contrast,
The sales volume in North America is slightly higher than that in Japan, which is 27 1 10,000 vehicles, but the sales volume is only10.6 trillion yen, a year-on-year decrease of10.7%.
It can be seen that Toyota's profit in Japan is higher than that in North America. On the one hand, it has a price advantage, on the other hand, local cost control is stronger than that in North America, although the latter accounts for a relatively high proportion of the sales of large-scale cars, which should be more suitable for profit growth.
For Toyota, regional and local adjustment only reflects the overall thinking-from beginning to end, it is to achieve balanced and sustainable development, improve efficiency and implement lean thinking.
Lean 1.0 focused on manufacturing, which became the beginning of the second revolution of automobile industry. Although the popularity of Lean 2.0 is far less than the former, it maximizes the meager profits in mature industries in a silent way, and Toyota TNGA architecture is the best embodiment.
From the superstructure to the terminal network, Toyota's internal reform has entered a very critical deep water area. This Japanese car manufacturer is not satisfied with the brilliance and smoothness of the comfort zone in terms of sales volume and profit. Even if the road to change is not smooth, we should take bold steps.
Never. It's easier to throw a knife at people than at yourself. However, the difficult time has come. Only by rebuilding your broken bones can you be reborn from the end of the road.
Text/Zhang Jieshi
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