Toyota undergoes major restructure
- November 28, 2017
- Posted by: Alan Feldberg
- Category: Industry News
Toyota Motor Corp is undergoing a major restructure as it sets out to tackle an ‘era of profound transformation.’
According to Reuters, Toyota president, Akio Toyoda said the company was facing a ‘now or never’ moment which could determine whether auto companies would continue to play a leading role as carmakers.
‘Our coming structural change reflects our will that the Toyota Group will tackle this era of profound transformation,’ Toyoda said in a statement.
As part of the reshuffle, Koji Kobayashi, a senior official at its biggest parts supplier, has been appointed as a top executive.
Koji Kobayashi, vice chairman and board member of Denso Corp, who previously worked at Toyota for more than 30 years in roles including finance and sales, returns to the Japanese company as chief financial and risk officer from January.
The company has also promoted Shigeki Tomoyama, who heads Toyota’s division for connected vehicle technologies and its racing arm, and Moritaka Yoshida, an architect of Toyota’s modular production system who also worked on the firm’s latest foray into automated driving functions, to executive vice president roles.
Gill Pratt, who heads Toyota’s artificial intelligence research division, has been named as a company fellow, while Satoshi Ogiso, a key member of Toyota’s original Prius development team who was dispatched to head brake supplier Advics Co in 2015, will return to Toyota as head of its commercial vehicles division.
