Toyota North America reviews

This is the second Toyota Manufacturing Plant I have worked at. Regarding TMMI, I feel the exempt culture at this plant is miss-shaped compared to other Toyota facilities working the Toyota Way. I notice that the relationship between Managers/A.M.s and Specialists is quite heavy-handed if not adversarial at times. This is really evident in their H.R. policies which are very conservative compared to other plants and lack any definition or flexibility. H.R. policies at this plant are applied very inconsistently. Leadership communication is usually one way and very top down. TMMI middle managers are very perception driven and I see terrific opportunities wasted because of politics and narrow focus. Again not typical of other Toyota plants. I see rush to judgement and reaction that is often not thought through. This only serves to tear down the stability of the processes and not strengthen them. This plant has an excellent professional workforce but I see the Specialists often spun in every direction with little opportunity to give their work the time required to do it right with a lasting contribution. Very high expectations placed on Specialists here with very few rewards. On the whole, this plant has it's priorities straight on the floor and builds good product but in the office culture has a lot of growing left to do. I see this management team having benefited from years of good sales and not really knowing if what they did all these years served the better purpose or not.

Because of the continuous improvement scheme they have, it is often times very frustrating to get work done. So many people need to see your paper work and sign off on it that it may take days for this process to happen. Day to day work seems boring and the same, this of course depends on what department you work in. Since the company is Japanese owned you will have Japanese managers. This poses several problems including communication issues. You will have to learn to understand japanish speak very quickly. Moving up in the company seems slow, but then again I have not had much experience.