Toyota’s financial incentives to restart the plants are clear. It has already warned that supplies in the US will be tight. With the American market surging again and Toyota coming off sales challenges because of recalls just over a year ago, it cannot afford another misstep. Ford (NYSE: F) and GM (NYSE: GM) may not say so in public, but Toyota’s trouble is just the sort of thing that they need to add market share.
The logistics of restarting the plant must be considerable. They operate with parts shipped from across the nation and some from overseas. Workers may have been dislocated, and certainly some of their relatives are. The ability to get consistent power supplies to plants also has to be a challenge.
Some of Japan’s large companies may have fallen on hard times recently. That is certainly true of Toyota and Sony. The earthquake could have been such a wound to their manufacturing abilities that the sales damage would have been irreparable. People at Toyota’s production facilities made sure that the company had a chance for a swift recovery, and it worked.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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