Toyota Material Handling is the world’s leading name in materials handling solutions. Toyota customers benefit from global resources, national coverage and local support.

Jon Buckley
Commercial Director. Toyota Material Handling

Toyota offers a single point of contact for all your materials handling needs. From a single truck user to large fleet users, we have the products and services to be a strong business partner. Toyota offers unrivalled levels of support, consisting of world-class products, fleet management, short-term hire, operator training, genuine parts and unbeatable sales and service support.

Products include: counterbalance forklifts, pallet trucks, stackers, order pickers, tow tractors, reach trucks and automation.

Jon Buckley, Commercial Director at Toyota Material Handling, speaks to Warehouse and Logistics News.

What are your best-known products and services?

Toyota is very well known for our comprehensive service offering a vital service supporting a wide range of materials handling equipment and keeping forklift fleets operating at peak efficiency to customers across the UK.

We’re just as well known for our award winning warehouse equipment and counterbalance forklift trucks – everything from our legendary hand pallet trucks through to our cutting edge automated trucks and systems, offering safety, productivity and reliability. At our heart as organisation is the world famous Toyota Production System from which we derive many of the principles by which we operate as a business.

Which market sectors and countries are your customers in? Which ones are growing fastest?

In the UK we work with a diverse range of customers from virtually all sectors as the need for materials handling is universal. Our products cover a wide range of needs from general materials handling requirements through to specialized uses, so we have a broad appeal. Because our customers reflect the economy at large, if a particular sector is growing well we will see that reflected in our organisation.

Who are your major customers and what do you do for them?

We have many major customers and we also have a great many smaller businesses that are our customers too. All of our customers are equally important to us. We focus on understanding business need, the environment in which they operate and the challenges they face. This allows us to do much more than simply provide materials handling equipment, we provide a complete solution, informed by our expertise in materials handling.

How do your products benefit your customers’ businesses?

Our products and service provide benefits in a number of ways. For example, our trucks and warehouse equipment are extremely reliable and are designed for demanding applications. This translates into reduced downtime and operational disruption.

Other benefits come from our constant development of our trucks and services, whether that is providing the latest technology to our engineers, increasing the fuel efficiency of our engines or introducing innovation such as our new automated truck range.

Why should customers choose you as their main supplier in your area?

Customers choose Toyota because of our well-deserved reputation for delivering reliable, efficient and effective warehouse equipment solutions. But we aren’t chosen just because of our reliable and productive trucks. Customers also choose us because behind our truck range we offer an extensive level of service support and the expertise to deliver the right materials handling solutions.

What’s business been like in the past year? How have conditions changed over this period and how have you reacted?

Business continues to be great for us. We have a simple formula, we put the customer at the heart of our decision making and focus on providing an excellent service. On top of that, we focus on our core Toyota values such as Kaizen (continuous improvement) and lean. We continue to move forwards.

What were the business highlights for you in the last 12 months?

There are so many areas that we could highlight, for example, being awarded Ecovadis Gold for our sustainability standards in the UK. Another would be that our trucks continue to be award winning, our new Traigo HT truck has just won an award for its innovative design. We’ve also been delighted to win new projects from both new and existing customers.

What’s been your most outstanding recent project?

Unfortunately I can’t go into specifics but to give an idea, we’ve delivered some cutting edge projects this year that make full use of our latest autonomous trucks. Equally, we’ve successfully implemented some large and intricate projects involving operator driven trucks.

How have you fine-tuned your offering in the last 12 months and why?

As I commented last year, one of our core values is that of continuous improvement (Kaizen). We constantly look for feedback from our customers and our colleagues, then we act on that. The constant refinement and checking means that we are constantly fine-tuning what we do and how we do it.

What recent enhancements have you made in customer service?

A particular enhancement we’ve introduced is the introduction of T-Stream, a mobile support platform for our technicians. The benefits for our customers are that it makes our technicians even more efficient as they are able to diagnose and repair even more quickly. And of course, we apply continuous improvement to our customer service to make sure that we deal with all enquiries as efficiently as possible.

What new products have you brought out? At Toyota we have a continuous flow of both new products and product improvements (as a result of continuous improvement). Notable developments have been our own Li-ion power cells, integrated telematics and our new heavy tonnage Traigo, an electric counterbalance that is causing a lot of interest.

What factors do you see affecting your business in the coming year? How will you turn these into opportunities?

When we look back 12 months, we thought that uncertainty within the economy would be ongoing and it has been. We believe this presents as much opportunity for us as it does a challenge. Companies are faced with challenges around the efficiency of their materials handling and in some aspects a shortage of people – Toyota is well positioned to assist them.

Are you planning to branch into any new areas, target new customers and take on more people?

We’ve continued to develop our automation offering and we are recruiting to support that. But, the operator driven truck area is still absolutely core to Toyota and we focus just as much, if not more on that aspect of materials handling.

Are you investing in new premises and extra staff? What about staff development and training?

At the risk of sounding repetitive, we take continuous improvement seriously. The idea of constantly improving is something that we apply to our premises and the skills that our teams have. We already have a very well trained team, but we are always working on getting better.

Are you involved in any major trade shows or other industry events over the next year?

We’re a leading exhibitor at IMHX at the NEC in September 2019. It’s a great opportunity to see everything that Toyota offers, so I’d recommend visiting us there if you can. And of course, we’ll be attending a number of other shows throughout the year.

What big news from Toyota Material Handling UK our readers look forward to seeing in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2019?

There are always new developments from Toyota Material Handling in the pipeline. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about those today. But watch this space.

And finally, if you had to sum up your company in a tweet what would it be?

Toyota, global #1 in material handling equipment

0370 850 1409

enquiries@uk.toyota-industries.eu

www.toyota-forklifts.co.uk

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