Toyota plans world domination
April 24th 2007 Toyota Materials Handling Europe aims to integrate the Toyota Industrial Equipment division with BT Rolatruc by September this year. The merger is part of Toyota’s plan to increase its global materials handling market share from 25 per cent to 33 per cent, a figure that would place it significantly above its rivals.
Speaking to UK press this month, Mike Mathias, who will head-up Toyota Materials Handling UK, says the move is designed to offer customers the best of both worlds: combining Toyota’s counterbalance expertise with BT’s warehouse know-how.
“To a degree it’s more of the same, but we now have the total solution under one roof,” says Mathias. “We can now deliver the whole package, regardless of company location or company size.”
He says the first major challenge is to manage the change, beginning with the shift to BT’s MOVEX IT Platform, which will be rolled out across the whole of TMHE. According to Mathias standardising on MOVEX would, hypothetically, enable an engineer to look for a particular part across the whole of Europe. He admits its a huge training activity, comparable to taking on a thousand major accounts, but says once migrated, the system “guarantees we don’t lose track of any business”, and will enable TMHE to concentrate on driving the business forward.
The company plans to recruit an additional 200 sales and service staff to support its planned growth.
Once the process is complete, BT will cease to exist as a company, becoming instead Toyota’s warehouse truck brand.
See the forthcoming June print issue of Handling & Storage solutions for further details.
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