Japan Takada Corporation held a press conference and Takada's CEO Takada Maojiu made public appearances for the first time after the Takada Airbag Inc. disclosure. He apologized for Takada Airbag's problems at the press conference and said that an investigation is under way.

However, the incident did not end here. On the same day as Takada’s press conference, Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi issued a statement saying that the number of cars carrying Takata airbags has been added to a total of 3.18 million vehicles worldwide. At this point, the total number of Takata airbag recall vehicles is about 44.22 million, and this number may continue to increase.

Allegedly, relevant agencies predict that the scale of recalls brought about by "Taodai Airbag Doors" will eventually exceed Toyota's "pedal door" and general "Ignition Switch Door", becoming the largest car recall incident in history.

Japan Takada was founded in 1933 and is a multinational company specializing in the production of automotive airbags, steering wheels, safety belts, electronic sensing devices and other automotive safety parts. It is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Takata Corporation provides airbags to many automakers such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, and BMW, which account for 22% of the global airbag market.

Takata airbags and many

Since last year, a series of recalls triggered by Takata Air has become the focus of the industry. The companies that announced the recall include more than a dozen multinational car companies such as Toyota, BMW, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Honda. The reason for the recall of this incident is strikingly similar: When the co-pilot airbag is deployed, the gas generator container may be damaged, causing debris to fly out and injuring the people in the vehicle. According to statistics, it has been confirmed that Gaotian airbags are associated with 6 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

Auto companies have suffered from Takada airbag problems, especially Honda's impact. Just on the 8th of this month, Honda announced the recall of 106,722 cars, including Civic and Fengfan, in the Chinese market.

Global Exposure Exposures

In fact, to a certain extent, car companies are doing more and more of the job of car assembly nowadays. Their chairs may come from Japan, the engine may come from Germany, and the on-board system may be U.S.... Of course, this is nothing unusual. Due to the limited energy of car manufacturers, it is not possible to produce all the spare parts for themselves. It is also wise to choose a good cooperative enterprise. According to experts, since the 1990s, many car companies have adopted a global approach to centralized procurement of parts and components. The higher the volume, the lower the cost, and thus has an advantage in market competition.

However, centralized procurement also brings great risks. Once suppliers have problems, they will be implicated in production and sales. In fact, as early as in 2008, the problems of Gaotian airbags began to be exposed to the public, but car companies still can not give up cooperation with Takada, but also have a lot to do with this form of procurement. In the field of airbag production, Takata has a large market share. Takata Airbags and the other two companies basically accounted for 80% of the global airbag market share. Once auto companies give up Takada and choose other airbag manufacturers, Takada will encounter problems, and auto makers will also face capacity and technical challenges because there are no matching replacement parts. Experts once said that Gaotian airbags accounted for a high proportion in the world. Once it went bankrupt, no spare parts manufacturer could make up for it by increasing production capacity. However, after a series of recall incidents caused by Takata Airbags, the most affected Honda announced the new vehicle Shuttle in Japan. The model claimed to be fuel-efficient, space-saving, and did not use Takata Airbags and switched to the safety of Daicel. Airbags.

Global procurement has indeed increased profits for car companies, but this too tight link has also made the entire chain of car production extremely fragile, and interlocking means that once there is a problem at one point, the entire chain will break.

Group recall or new normal

In the global auto parts market, Japan’s auto parts industry has strong technological advantages. Thanks to this advantage, Japanese spare parts manufacturers have quickly established monopoly alliances, resulting in the dependence of auto production in Japan on Japanese spare parts companies. weight.

According to the data, in the 2014 "American Auto News" selection of top 100 auto parts, there were as many as 29 companies on the list, 6 more than the United States, 10 more than the auto industry giant Germany, and they were included in the list. Companies also have few competitors in the world auto parts industry. This also shows the important role of Japanese spare parts companies in vehicle assembly. For example, the 2011 Great Japan Earthquake triggered a large-scale suspension of Japanese companies, and Japanese auto parts companies were unable to complete orders on time. This caused auto parts companies, Volvo, and General Motors that imported parts from Japan to slow down. Production speed. According to statistics, because of this natural disaster in Japan, as of the end of March of that year, the world's auto production decreased by 600,000 vehicles.

Analysts believe that it is not surprising that large-scale recalls are happening today. Under the trend of car manufacturing platform and general parts and components, global auto parts procurement is implemented. Once a certain spare part has problems, it will make one. The batch of multinational car brands had to be collectively recalled, and the chances of similar “popularity” issues will gradually increase in the future.

Japan’s auto parts and accessories not only affect traditional car production countries, but also have a huge impact on the Chinese market. Zhang Zhiyong, a commentator in the automotive industry, said that in the first half of last year, the number of imported Japanese spare parts accounted for more than one-fourth of the entire automobile spare parts import quota, and the importance or impact of Japanese auto parts and accessories enterprises on the Chinese automobile industry. This is even greater than the auto manufacturing industry, which also exposes the major concerns of China's auto parts industry.

Reduced cost or quality

For car manufacturers, how to produce cars more quickly and profitably, and pursuing profit maximization is what they have been pursuing. From the initial stage of global procurement to lower costs, to the production and use of platform-based and general-purpose parts, It can be seen that car companies control the cost of auto parts.

However, in recent years, new problems have emerged in the spare parts market - some automakers have begun to struggle with spare parts purchases to further reduce costs, repeatedly pushing down suppliers' prices and squeezing spare parts manufacturers. The prices of spare parts manufacturers have been driven down by auto makers, which may cause parts suppliers to cut corners in order to maintain profits. On the other hand, experts say that when auto parts and components are undergoing technological innovation, strict quality inspections are required, and some even require repeated inspections. This will not only increase the time but also increase the cost of capital. This will be both for suppliers and car companies. Pressure is generated, so the inspection time is gradually shortened to reduce costs, but the quality risk of parts will increase. In this Takada airbag incident, even the most demanding technical standards of Toyota were involved.

In addition, a series of problems currently exposed in the spare parts market also reflect the relationship between car manufacturers and suppliers. In the final analysis, they must be interdependent and mutual supervision. Spare parts companies must supply qualified products. At the same time, auto companies must also strengthen the supervision of spare parts companies and strictly control the quality. They cannot lead to series matching problems due to reasons such as rushing progress and compressing test time.

A series of recalls triggered by Takata Airbags may continue for some time, but for auto companies, how to get along better with spare parts suppliers and avoid such incidents may be a long-term issue.