TOKYO -- Toyota Motor Corp. has moved up its earthquake recovery timetable by a month and now plans to resume normal operations by Oct. 1, according to a Japanese news report.
Toyota had narrowed its list of at-risk parts to 30 from more than 1,200 originally disrupted by the March 11 earthquake. But procurement officials at the world’s largest automaker now say those remaining parts are readily available, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said.
That will allow Toyota to resume unrestricted production of any model in any variant by the start of October, the report said, citing unidentified Toyota executives.
Toyota previously had said normal production would resume in November.
Spokesman Paul Nolasco said Toyota is still publicly keeping to its November time frame.
But last month Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi, global head of manufacturing, told Automotive News he aimed to bring complete global output restoration forward to October.
Toyota was scheduled to get an update from affected suppliers at the end of June, he said. And Toyota would adjust the recovery schedule accordingly after that, he said.
“I’m very much looking forward to that, but it’s not for certain,” Niimi said. “If we can pull it forward by one month, I think that would be a great accomplishment.”
In terms of volume, Toyota’s production for most models already has been fully restored to pre-quake levels. But some models or variants are still lagging because of lingering parts shortages.
Niimi said last month that North American output of the Toyota RAV4 and Lexus RX crossovers, for example, won’t return to normal until the autumn because of shortages of rollover-prevention sensors tailored to those models. According to Kyodo, Toyota will resume normal delivery of most vehicles by August and restore total global production volume to pre-quake levels by the end of July.
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