Toyota to restart Japan production on Wednesday after system failure

Toyota Motor will restart operations at its assembly plants in Japan on Wednesday, after a production system malfunction brought domestic output to a halt at the world’s biggest-selling automaker.

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 from the afternoon, it said.

The company continues to investigate the cause of the glitch, which it said was not due to a cyberattack and prevented it from ordering components.

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 per cent 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, Reuters calculations showed. That excludes vehicles from group automakers Daihatsu and Hino.

Operations were halted for a day last year when a supplier suffered a cyberattack, hampering Toyota’s ability to order parts. Toyota resumed operations using a back-up network.

Toyota’s share price closed down 0.21 per cent at 2,431.5 yen after spending much of the morning deeper in negative territory.

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