Toyota Appoints Top Engineer to Fix Vehicle Certification Issues

Toyota has appointed one of its top vehicle evaluation experts to spearhead the drive to improve its vehicle safety certification process.

The world’s highest selling automaker is attempting to avoid a repeat of the scandal that saw production of some of its models, and also those produced under the Daihatsu and Lexus brands, after Japanese government officials discovered failings in the company’s vehicle safety certification process.

Now Toyota moves Satoshi Mikutsu, its general manager at Toyota Compact Car Company’s vehicle evaluation and engineering division, to become Fellow at the Vehicle Development Center.

In this position, Mikutsu will undertake to carry out Toyota’s commitment to restructure and retrain other Toyota leaders and senior management in best practices pertaining to vehicle safety certification in his new position as Leader of Vehicle Safety System Development.

The automaker is hoping to benefit from Mikutsu’s extensive expertise in vehicle evaluation and engineering to draw a veil of what has been an embarrassing and costly episode. He will report directly to Toyota President Koji Sato.