Toyota CEO Promises Automaker Will Be Better, Faster, Stronger

Jim Lentz, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, is going to great lengths to tell the world his company is only going to get better in the years to come — proving to his employer that he knows exactly what his job entails. In addition to explaining how the brand’s new modular architecture will give assembly lines much-needed flexibility, this week also had him announcing Toyota won’t dawdle anymore on getting product into consumer hands.

“I think we’re going to be quicker to market,” Lentz announced to the press at Toyota’s brand new $1 billion Texas headquarters on Thursday. “Before if you were part of the sales organization, you had your own legal team [and] HR team, so there was a lot of redundancy across the organization … we were able to streamline that and, with a lot of the headcount changes, we were able to hire more engineers to our operation in Ann Arbor, as we continue to develop vehicles here in North America, for North America.”

While Toyota’s U.S. R&D remains fixated in Michigan, the Texas base of operations unifies thousands of employees under one massive roof that had previously been spread across the country. According to WardsAuto, Lentz claimed Toyota retained 72 percent of its workforce from California, Kentucky, and New York. Around 1,400 employees opted out of making the move.

There is time, however, for them to change their minds. Toyota is giving employees a two-year window in which to relocate and is incentivizing employees who stay with the company in Plano, Texas as well. “I fully expect that we will have people [go], as they reach retirement age, two or three years down the road,” Lentz said. “But I really don’t expect to see what Nissan saw. That was a fairly large drop-off.”

Nissan encountered problems when it lost 60 percent of its 1,300 Los Angeles headquarters staffers and executives after relocating to Nashville in 2006. Attempting to do the same thing, Toyota has taken every precaution to avoid similar setbacks.

“I came to Nashville with only two of my product planners,” stated Larry Dominique in a 2014 interview with Automotive News, who originally relocated with Nissan North America as vice president of product planning but eventually returned to California in 2011 to become executive VP of TrueCar. “People said we’d never be able to recruit the new talent we needed to replace everyone,” Dominique recalled. “And that did take some work. But we did it. We assembled a great staff.”

Toyota achieved a much higher retention rate while using Nissan’s example as a cautionary tale. It went a little further to make the move easier on staff and is showcasing the campus’ seven office buildings as a desirable place to work. In addition to providing space to work, the Plano location also has an on-site pharmacy, physician, and 11 eating establishments. Toyota also saw fit to provide non-traditional office spaces and amenities — although it only cited microwaves and refrigerators, which we are willing to bet most offices already have.

Toyota has hired 800 workers locally, most of which live in the Dallas area, for about 1,000 open positions. There will be 4,200 permanent employees at the new HQ, but the campus can accommodate up to 6,500, according to Lentz.

Toyota is also using the Texas locale to highlight its commitment to green technologies, claiming it possesses the largest non-utility-owned solar array in the state. While that only accounts for 30 percent of the facility’s needs, the automaker has claimed the remaining power all comes from renewable energy sources. There is also a massive rainwater collection grid to harvest 400,000 gallons of fluid to use in irrigation. But Governor Greg Abbott said water and power weren’t nearly as important as the people Texas had to offer.

“The greatest resource we have here in the Lone Star State is our highly-skilled workforce that draws global businesses like Toyota to Texas every day,” Abbott said during the HQ’s opening ceremony. “The 4,000 jobs added and Toyota’s impressive new facility are proof of the remarkable momentum of Texas’ continuing economic expansion. I am proud that Toyota is expanding here, and I thank them for their commitment to being an important part of our Texas community.”

Even though the campus opening was little more than an opportunity for Toyota executives and local dignitaries to issue corporate praise until they were blue in the face, the company has been making serious moves in 2017. Slower than its competitors to modernize, the brand has begun taking swifter steps toward electrification and updating its production facilities. It has also started putting more money into R&D and expanded its engineering operations in Michigan. Texas’ role to play is to ensure nothing holds Toyota back in putting that fruit on the market in a timely manner.

[Images: Toyota]