Toyota shuts down plants briefly

Much to the relief of millions of its customers and franchisees, the Japanese auto giant Toyota has announced it will resume operations at domestic assembly plants after a 24-hour stoppage caused by a system glitch.

The company said that it would investigate the cause of the disruption, which began on Monday and prevented Toyota from processing orders for components.

Production is expected to return to normal at each of its 14 plants in Japan from the start of the second shift on Wednesday, the company said. The plants together account for about a third of the automaker’s global production, according to Reuters calculations. Toyota delivered almost 10.5 million cars worldwide last year.

‘’It is our understanding that the malfunction of the system was not caused by a cyberattack. However we will continue to investigate the cause…we would like to apologize once again to our customers, suppliers and related parties for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of operations,’’ the company said in a statement.

Toyota’s operations were suspended for a day in 2022 when a supplier was hit with a cyberattack, causing problems with ordering parts. The car giant then resumed operations using a backup network.

Toyota will resume operations at 25 production lines of a dozen plants in its home market from Wednesday morning and add the final two plants in the afternoon, it said.

The plants together account for about a third of the automaker's global production, Reuters calculations showed.

Toyota's domestic production had been on the rebound after a series of output cuts it blamed on semiconductor shortages. Output was up 29% in January-June, the first such increase in two years.

Its Japan output averaged about 13,500 vehicles daily in the first half of the year. That excludes vehicles from group automakers Daihatsu and Hino.