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There was no information immediately available regarding the potential attacker or their motivation. The attack occurred shortly after Japan and its Western allies tightened sanctions against Russia when it invaded Ukraine, however it was unclear whether the two events had anything to do with one another.
Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, declared that his nation will look into the incident to see if Russia was involved.
Before doing extensive investigations, it is difficult to conclude whether this has anything to do with Russia, he told reporters.
On Sunday, Kishida made the announcement that Japan would join the US and other nations in forbidding some Russian banks from using the SWIFT global payment system. He added that Japan would provide $100 million in urgent relief to Ukraine.
According to a Kojima Industries Corp. spokeswoman, the supplier appears to have been the target of some sort of cyberattack.
The representative noted that the business is unsure of how long the shutdown at its 14 plants in Japan, which make up around a third of its total production, will last.
The stoppage affects some facilities run by Toyota affiliates Hino Motors (7205.T) and Daihatsu (6023.T).
Toyota is a pioneer of just-in-time manufacturing, where parts are delivered from suppliers directly to the assembly line rather than being stored. Toyota has previously been the target of cyberattacks.
State-sponsored hackers have already attacked Japanese businesses online, including a 2014 attack on Sony Corp (6758.T) that disclosed corporate data and brought down computer systems.
After Sony released “The Interview,” a comedy portraying a conspiracy to assassinate the regime’s leader Kim Jong Un, the United States blamed North Korea for that attack.
The COVID pandemic has prompted Toyota and other automakers to reduce output, and the production halt comes as the largest automaker in the world deals with supply chain problems around the globe.
Due to a lack of parts brought on by the Canadian trucker protests, Toyota also had to cease some of its North American operations this month. View More
Editing was done by Louise Heavens and Tomasz Janowski; reporting was done by Satoshi Sugiyama, Tim Kelly, and Maki Shiraki.
In This Article...
Toyota plants are they closing?
According to Reuters, the biggest carmaker in the world is stopping production at one-third of its facilities. After one of its suppliers was hacked, Toyota says it will temporarily suspend producing automobiles in its Japanese factory.
The supplier in question is known as Kojima Industries, and it creates composite and plastic components for Toyota’s hybrid and fuel cell electric vehicles as well as interior automobile parts. According to Reuters, a Toyota representative referred to the incident as a “supplier system failure.”
Toyota will consequently shut down 28 production lines at 14 sites throughout Japan starting on March 1.
Hackers are increasingly targeting Toyota. At least three breaches of the automaker’s security occurred in 2019: a malware attack in Australia, a breach of 3.1 million customers’ data in Japan (and perhaps Thailand and Vietnam), and a $37 million-costing swindle.
Toyota experienced another breach in 2021, this time through a US-based parts business, in what is thought to have been a Russian-related incident.
However, Toyota is not the only carmaker that has had to suspend operations as a result of a security breach. Honda had to suspend building vehicles at facilities in Ohio and Turkey, as well as motorbikes in India and South America, according to a study we published in 2020.
A limited amount of further information, including any probable suspects, is available concerning today’s cyberattack. Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, did assert that his country would look into any potential ties to Russia.
Toyota may be reducing its output.
- Due to the lack of semiconductors, Toyota Motor stated on Tuesday that it would reduce its global production target by around 100,000 units, or to about 850,000 vehicles, in June.
- Additionally, the automaker reported the suspension of additional domestic assembly lines owing to a supply shortfall brought by by the Covid-19 lockout in Shanghai.
- The business maintained its forecast that 9.7 million automobiles will be produced globally by March 2023.
Toyota is closing plants for what reason?
We at Toyota would like to once more express our regret for the numerous changes we have had to make to our production schedules due to the parts shortage brought on by the spread of COVID-19. This has caused our customers, suppliers, and other parties who have been waiting for the delivery of vehicles great inconvenience.
Due to poor attendance caused by a COVID-19 outbreak at one of our suppliers and a scarcity of parts caused by a production equipment fault at another supplier, we have decided to cease operations at several of our domestic plants as of June 17 (Friday). This time, the suspension strategy will be added to the recently made notification (Adjustments to domestic production in June).
Due to such suspensions, about 40,000 units will be impacted, and the original worldwide production estimate for June has been lowered to an estimate of 750,000 units (approx. 800,000 units). The fiscal year’s output forecast is unchanged (approx. 9.7 million).
The production plan could not be as high as expected because the shortage of semiconductors and the spread of COVID-19 continue to make it challenging to predict the future. To prevent sharp drops in production, we will carefully monitor the components supply, and we’ll keep working as hard as we can to get as many vehicles to our customers as soon as we can.
The domestic operations suspension timetable for June and July is listed below.
Toyota is there a production halt?
Toyota is halting more manufacturing as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai, which is causing component shortages. This is an indication that supply-chain bottlenecks may continue even as Shanghai slowly begins to recover.
Toyota expects to produce around 850,000 automobiles worldwide in June, 250,000 of which will be produced in Japan and the remainder elsewhere. This amounts to a global reduction of around 100,000 vehicles for June.
The business intends to maintain its fiscal year output target of 9.7 million vehicles and wants to produce an average of 850,000 units per month through the month of August.
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Honda is it closing down?
Honda is closing all of its North American manufacturing facilities. That also applies to the Greensburg assembly facility.
Honda said it will stop operations starting on Monday and will resume operations on March 31.
Because of concerns about the coronavirus, the three major automakers in Detroit, General Motors, Ford, and Fiat-Chrysler, have decided to close all of their factories. Due to the inclusion of the Fort Wayne GM Assembly facility on the list of closures, this will have a significant impact on Indiana. At one facility, more than 4,000 people are employed. After the UAW strike in late 2017, it would be the second time in a short period of time that work would cease at the factory.
Toyota, which has a facility in Princeton, said it has no plans to close any factories.
Toyota is resuming automobile production.
(ticker: TM) provided investors with a somber update on Monday. It won’t meet company expectations for the anticipated production.
It’s simply another illustration of how difficult it is for automakers to offer trustworthy advice. Auto investors are grabbing at straws because there is less certainty about the future, and they are hungry for periodic updates even though these increasingly seem to frequently carry bad news. Semiconductors are to blame once more.
Since more than a year ago, the semiconductor shortage has limited global auto production, leading to low new car stocks and record new and used car prices. Automotive investors have been waiting for the worldwide semiconductor shortage to end for several quarters, but neither they nor the auto industry were anticipating the pace at which things would improve.
“According to a Toyota news release, “because to the impact of semiconductor shortages, we have altered our production schedule by roughly 100,000 units globally from the number of units issued to our suppliers at the beginning of the year.”
Toyota currently anticipates producing roughly 750,000 vehicles in May and, on average, 800,000 vehicles each month in May, June, and July. The business has recently sold cars at a rate of roughly 840,000 units each month. The situation doesn’t seem to be improving all that much over time.
The news, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to have stunned investors much. Toyota shares is trading lower by 0.2% internationally.
When discussing the shortfall, auto manufacturer representatives frequently predict that it will get better nine months from the time they speak, but they then frequently have to lower their expectations later.
Paul Jacobson, CFO of GM, stated that he planned to raise inventory levels to a “by late 2021 or early 2022, a much safer level. That was GM’s way of saying that output would increase by the end of the year.
Production and inventory levels, however, have continued to be modest. Jacobson stated that although semiconductor supply had improved, there was still pressure on semiconductor supply during the company’s fourth-quarter results call in February. Jacob also recently stated at an investment conference “This year, we do not anticipate a significant rise in inventories.
This past week, one of the biggest semiconductor companies in the world, (TSM), released its earnings. In his analysis on profits, New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu stated that “Supply and demand are still outpacing one another, and capacity will be limited through 2022.
Is Toyota ready for maximum production?
On March 28, 2017, the Toyota logo may be seen at the 38th Bangkok International Motor Show in Bangkok, Thailand. Athit Perawongmetha for Reuters
The largest carmaker in Japan’s action is the most recent to draw attention to the supply-chain issues impeding the global auto industry as the COVID-19 outbreak continues. The Ukraine crisis has made the situation more difficult.
According to a representative for Toyota, domestic output will be down by roughly 20% in April, 10% in May, and roughly 5% in June according to an earlier production schedule. The representative stated that production would still be at a high level because the prior plan took the need to make up for lost output into account.
The lower output should ease some of the stress on the automaker’s suppliers, the spokesperson said, declining to comment on the quantity of cars affected or the financial impact. The automaker’s suppliers have had to deal with a number of modifications to production plans as a result of chip shortages.
This week, Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota, warned union members that the lack of a solid production strategy may lead to suppliers getting “exhausted” and that the months of April through June would be “an intentionally cooling off” period.
Rivian Automotive Inc. (RIVN.O), a U.S. manufacturer of electric vehicles, stated on Thursday that supply-chain difficulties could reduce its anticipated production this year by 50%, to 25,000 units. View More
Through the end of this month, Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) has announced it will reduce production at two domestic sites by about 10%.
A cyberattack on a supplier caused Toyota to halt domestic production for one day at the beginning of this month, preventing the production of around 13,000 automobiles that day.
As long as it can guarantee a steady supply of semiconductors, Toyota intends to produce a record 11 million vehicles in fiscal 2022.
On Friday, its shares fell 4.4%, lagging a 2.1% drop in Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 average (.N225).