Toyota Halts Production at All Japanese Factories

On August 29th, Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan announced a temporary halt in operations across all 14 of its vehicle assembly factories in the country. This move comes in response to a disruptive computer system failure. Presently, there is no fixed timeline for when production will resume. The suspension has affected a total of 28 production lines spread across these 14 factories. Toyota has refrained from disclosing the specific vehicle models impacted by this disruption. Rough calculations by media sources suggest that the combined output of these halted factories accounts for approximately one-third of the company's global production capacity.

Reports from Kyodo News detail that the malfunction emerged during the early hours of August 29th, resulting in an inability to process orders for critical components. Initially, Toyota communicated that 12 assembly factories would be temporarily suspended, excluding the Kyushu Miyata Plant in Fukuoka Prefecture and the Kyoto Factory of Toyota Motor Corporation. However, this count was subsequently updated to include all 14 factories.

The root cause of the system failure remains under investigation. Toyota's initial assessment leans towards the likelihood of the issue not being linked to a cyberattack. It's noteworthy that a year earlier, Toyota's subsidiary factories had to be temporarily shut down due to a cyberattack on a Japanese supplier.

According to Kyodo News, the Toyota assembly factories operate on a uniform system. Interestingly, the Miyata Plant and the Kyoto Factory had concluded order processing just before the malfunction occurred on August 29th.

Aside from catering to the domestic market, Toyota's 14 domestic factories also play a crucial role in producing vehicles for international markets. In the fiscal year 2022, Toyota's global vehicle production reached a staggering 9.13 million units, with 2.78 million units being manufactured by its domestic factories.

The ramifications of this system malfunction have had a cascading effect. Toyota Industries, a group company, has been compelled to partially suspend the operations of two engine factories due to the disruptions caused by the vehicle assembly plant malfunction.

At the close of the trading day, Toyota's shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange recorded a 0.21% decline. Renowned as the world's largest automobile manufacturer in terms of sales volume, the company exhibited an average daily production of 13,500 vehicles during the first half of the current year. This marked a remarkable 29% surge compared to the previous year – an initial growth in nearly two years.