Toyota production in Japan was discontinued due to system failures at the assembly plants

TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Tuesday it had suspended operations at all of its 14 assembly plants in Japan due to a production system glitch, halting domestic production at the world’s largest plant. Auto manufacturer sale.

A company spokesperson said the glitch was preventing Toyota from ordering the components, and its cause was still under investigation, although it was “not likely due to a cyberattack”.

The spokesman said Toyota had suspended operations at 12 plants in its home market as of Tuesday morning and added the last two plants as of afternoon. It was not clear how much production was lost.

Reuters calculations showed that the plants together account for about a third of the automaker’s global output.

Toyota’s domestic production was rebounding after a series of production cuts it blamed on a semiconductor shortage. Production rose 29% in the January-June period, the first such increase in two years.

Reuters calculations showed that its production in Japan averaged about 13,500 vehicles per day in the first half of the year. This excludes vehicles from the group of automakers Daihatsu and Hino.

Operations were halted for a day last year when a supplier was hit by a cyberattack, which hampered Toyota’s ability to order parts. Toyota has resumed operations using a backup network.

Analysts said Toyota could be tested in terms of making up for production lost during the outage, such as running extra shifts.

“The production was running at full capacity, so there wasn’t much additional room for production,” said Seiji Sugiura, an analyst at the Tokai Tokyo Research Institute.

NHK reported that Toyota will likely be able to restart the Miata plant in southern Fukuoka prefecture from 0700 GMT on Wednesday.

It is still not clear when production will resume at the plant, the spokesperson said.

Tuesday’s incident also had a significant impact. Toyota Industries Corporation (6201.T) said it had partially suspended operations at two engine plants due to a malfunction at the automaker.

Toyota is a pioneer in just-in-time inventory management, which keeps costs down but means supply chain disruption puts production at risk.

While the cause of the latest glitch wasn’t clear, Japanese companies have been on the alert in recent days as businesses and government offices have reported harassing phone calls.

The government said the calls were likely from China and related to Japan releasing treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Toyota’s share price closed down 0.21% at 2,431.5 yen after spending most of the morning in negative territory.

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