TMC Holds Completion Ceremony for New After-sales Training Facility in Japan

Tajimi City, Japan, July 22, 2013―Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) held a ceremony here today to mark the completion of the Tajimi Service Center. The aim of the new training facility is to improve the skills of after-sales service staff at dealers throughout the world and to perform R&D in repair and maintenance technology.

The completion ceremony was attended by approximately 120 people, including Japanese Government Cabinet Minister Keiji Furuya, Gifu Prefecture Governor Hajime Furuta, Tajimi City Mayor Masanori Furukawa, TMC President Akio Toyoda and TMC Executive Vice President Masamoto Maekawa.
Concerning the new facility, Toyoda said: "Customer service is essential to us. We must raise the level of our repair and maintenance skills, serve the customer from the customer's viewpoint, and communicate thoroughly so that we can provide service directly to the customer faster and more accurately. At the Tajimi Service Center, we can reproduce and confirm through genchi-genbutsu the usage environments of our customers and train after-sales service staff in a way best suited to every region around the world. Our aim is to build a global team of after-sales service staff to help realize a safer and more secure mobile society."

In addition to product appeal and sales capabilities, TMC recognizes that it is more important than ever to provide a full range of customer-oriented after-sales services to ensure sustainable growth for the company around the world.
After-sales service staff interact directly with customers, and their technical and communication skills contribute greatly to ensuring customer confidence and satisfaction. TMC has and will continue to actively work together with dealers to improve the technical skills of after-sales service staff.

Vehicle usage environments differ widely around the world and vehicle technology is growing more sophisticated year by year, meaning that after-sales service staff need a wider range of knowledge and technical skills than ever before. There is also a need to quickly develop and increase the number of after-sales service staff for growing markets.

The Tajimi Service Center has been designed to meet these needs by augmenting the functions currently performed by the Nisshin Training Center in Nisshin City, Aichi Prefecture. The site of the new service center has an area of 187,000 m2 and includes a four-storey training facility, a drive-evaluation course consisting of a 1.3 km loop that encloses a series of short courses reproducing various road surfaces from around the world. These facilities enable practical training based on the real-world conditions in which customers use their vehicles.

On a yearly basis, the new center will enable the number of trainees to be increased from the 2,600 currently handled at the Nisshin facility to 4,800. In the future, TMC plans to add R&D functions for repair and maintenance technology to the center to further strengthen the company's global competitiveness in after-sales technology.

At the end of 2012, the Toyota and Lexus after-sales service team numbered approximately 120,000 people working in approximately 12,800 dealers and 135 countries and regions around the world. By opening the Tajimi Service Center, TMC is committed to building a global network of after-sales service staff that will continue to work to earn the trust of customers and to provide the best quality after-sales service in the world.