Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, faced a major disruption in its production on August 29th, when a system glitch forced it to stop operations at all of its 14 factories in Japan. The company said the problem was caused by insufficient disk space on its database servers, which resulted from a maintenance procedure that deleted and organized data. The backup function also failed, making it impossible to switch over to another system.
The glitch affected about 15,000 vehicles that were scheduled to be produced on August 29th. Toyota said it did not expect a significant impact on its annual production target of 9.3 million vehicles. However, the incident raised questions about the company’s data management and IT infrastructure, especially as it is investing heavily in digital transformation and connected services.
“We apologize for any inconvenience caused to our customers and suppliers,” Toyota said in a statement. “We are still investigating the cause of this problem and the impact on our production,” said Shino Yamada, a spokeswoman for Toyota.
Toyota restored the system on August 30th and resumed operations. The company said it would review its maintenance procedures and prevent a recurrence. “This is an opportunity for us to rethink how we manage data,” said Masato Endo, a senior executive engineer at Toyota.
“It’s very rare for Toyota to stop all domestic plants at once,” said Takeshi Miyao, an analyst at Carnorama Japan. “It shows how serious the problem was, but also how quickly they managed to fix it.”
Toyota’s production and sales in July rose by 40.6% and 34.5% respectively from a year earlier, as the company recovered from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also facing challenges from chip shortages, supply chain disruptions, and rising competition from electric vehicle makers.
“We are doing our utmost to minimize any impact on our customers,” said Jun Nagata, Toyota’s chief communications officer. “We are also working hard to achieve our vision of mobility for all.”
Relevant articles:
– Toyota says filled disk storage halted Japan-based factories, BleepingComputer, September 1, 2023
– Toyota blames factory shutdown in Japan on ‘insufficient disk space’, The Guardian, September 6, 2023
– Toyota’s Japanese factories reopen after glitch as July production, sales rise, MSN, August 30, 2023
– Computer glitch shuts down operations at 14 Toyota assembly plants across Japan, MSN, August 29, 2023