Toyota Motor Corporation (Japanese: トヨタ自動車株式会社, Toyota Jidōsha KK?, IPA: [toꜜjota]) TYO: 7203, LSE: TYT, NYSE: TM, commonly known simply as Toyota and abbreviated as TMC, is a multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In 2010, Toyota Motor Corporation employed 317,734 people worldwide, and was the world's largest automobile manufacturer by production.
The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation group companies are Toyota (including the Scion brand), Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino Motors, along with several "non-automotive" companies. TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.
Toyota Motor Corporation is headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi. Its Tokyo office is located in Bunkyo, Tokyo. Its Nagoya office is located in Nakamura-ku, Nagoya. In addition to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota provides financial services through its Toyota Financial Services division and also builds robots.
In predominantly Chinese-speaking countries or regions using traditional Chinese characters, e.g. Hong Kong and Taiwan, Toyota is known as "豊田". In predominantly Chinese speaking countries using simplified Chinese characters (e.g. China), Toyota is known as "丰田" (pronounced as "Fēngtián" in Mandarin Chinese ). These are the same characters as the founding family's name "Toyoda" in Japanese, which translate to "fertile rice paddies" in the Chinese language as well.
In 1924 Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyoda Model G Automatic Loom. The principle of Jidoka, which means that the machine stops itself when a problem occurs, became later a part of the Toyota Production System. Looms were built on a small production line. In 1929, the patent for the automatic loom was sold to a British company, generating the starting capital for the automobile development.
No comments:
Post a Comment