Final Presentation

Toyota Motor Corporation Report

By Aaresh Bogati
UCLA Extension Tokyo Center
Business English Communication Program
Essentials

Presentation Introduction

Good afternoon everyone. Today I would like to talk about Toyota Motor Corporation and the Japanese Automobile Industry.

First, let me ask you a question. What’s your favorite Car?


The purpose of this presentation is to persuade you that Toyota Motor Corporation can be more successful in the future, even though it is facing a great problem in its production at present.

First, I’ll tell you about the Japanese Automobile industry. Then, I’ll tell you about Toyota's business and its financial results. Finally, I’ll predict the future of Toyota’s business. We will have a Q&A time at the end, so please hold your questions until then.

Industry Overview

First, let me tell you about the Automotive Industry and Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.

According to Wikipedia of Automotive industry in Japan,
Hatsudoki Seizo Co., Ltd. was established in 1907 in Japan.
Japanese automakers launched a bevy of new cars in 1960s in Japan.

Toyota Motor Corporation, which is simply known as Toyota is the world's largest automaker.
This is a multinational corporation. Its headquarters are in Japan.
Toyota has 320,000 employees worldwide.

Next, here are some recent facts.

According to JAMA (Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, Inc.) nearly 8% of Japan's working population is involved in auto industry related work.
Auto production account for 17% of the total value of Japan's manufacturing shipments.

We know that Japan was the world's largest vehicle manufacturer in 2008 but it has ceded this position to China in 2009.

Japanese manufacturers produced very affordable, reliable, and popular cars throughout the 1990s, and as a result, Japan became the largest car producing nation in the world in 2000. However, its market share has decreased slightly in recent years, particularly due to old and new competition from South Korea, China and India. Nevertheless, Japan's car industry continues to flourish, its market share has risen again, and in the first quarter of 2008 Toyota surpassed General Motors to become the world's largest car manufacturer.


Many Americans are employed by Japanese automakers and dealers in the US and the total number of employees were 392,635 in 2008.

In 1986, JAMA members exported about 3.4 million vehicles from Japan to the U.S.
In 2008, they exported about 2 million vehicles here, a reduction of about 1.4 million vehicles.
In 1986, JAMA members produced 617,000 vehicles in the U.S. In 2008, they produced nearly
3 million vehicles there an increase of nearly 2.4 million vehicles.
Japanese automakers now supply 62% of their total U.S. sales from their North American plants, compared with less than 12% in 1986.

Next, I’d like to tell you about Toyota Corporation in more details.

Toyota Automatic Loom Works, Ltd. was established in November 1926 to manufacture and market automatic looms invented by Sakichi Toyoda. The company name was changed to Toyota Industries Corporation in August 2001.

Toyota Corporation manufactures and sells textile machinery, automobiles, and materials handling equipment. It also has a logistics business.

Toyota sales were as follows in FY 2009.
Textile machinery was 1.9%, Logistics 7.2%, Materials Handling Equipment 40.4%, Automobile 47.7% and others 2.8%.

Financial Highlights
Toyota Motor Corporation FY ending March 31 (millions of yen)

Year	2008	2009	%change 2009 vs. 2008
Net sales	2,000,536	1,584,252	(20.8) %
Operating income (loss)	96,853	(6,621)	-
Ordinary income	126,488	14,343	(88.7)
Net income (loss)	80,460	(32,767)	-
Research and development expenses	36,750	33,646	(8.4)
Cash dividends per share (yen)	60.00	40.00	(33.3)
At Year-End
Total assets	2,965,585	2,327,432	(21.5) %
Total net assets	1,453,996	977,670	(32.8)
Number of employees	39,528	39,916	1.0

Toyota’s Net sales were 2 trillion yen in 2008 and 1.5 trillion yen in 2009 which was 20.8% less than 2008.
Operating income was -6.6 billion yen, Net income was -32.8 billion yen and ordinary income was 14.3 billion yen, but employees increased in 2009 to 31,916 in Japan, as of March 31, 2009.

Summary: OK, so, I hope that helps you understand Toyota’ history and main manufacturing products.


Now, let me finish by predicting the future of Toyota Motor Corporation.

As you can see here, Toyota’s stock price has been rising recently. However, its stock price has fallen in 2009 because of the economic recession.

I researched and compared its stock price to its competitors and I can say that Toyota’s stock price is starting to rise again. So I believe Toyota’s business can be successful in the future.

I have two reasons for this view.

First of all, Toyota can be successful because it has many excellent products that are able to support its business. In my opinion, Toyota’s products are very affordable, reliable, and popular. We know that Corolla, Prius, Camry, and Yaris were top ten products in 2009.
People are buying the products of Toyota from all around the world. Its products are in high demand in America, Europe and the rest of the world.

Secondly, Toyota can be successful because it is going to create new models cars every year. Toyota knows the demand of the consumer very well.
Toyota is going to launch new models cars in 2011 which are the Toyota Camry, the Toyota Camry Hybrid, and the Toyota Sienna. Based on my research they all are affordable and excellent products.

OK, in conclusion, I hope I have persuaded you that Toyota has very popular products and can be successful in the future because it is improving its marketing.

Thank You.

The Final Session

That was our final session of the Business English Essentials. The topic was about negotiation skill, which is not new to anyone. Negotiation skills are necessary things for businessperson especially for trading companies.


Our first agenda was about a dialogue practice of negotiating sales contract. We were three groups in our final session. So we practiced, dialogue in our groups and learned some target phrases about the negotiation. Negotiating a contract is very difficult task itself. We must know how to get success when negotiating a contract with clients. The main aim of this class is to get knowledge of the negotiation. There are five stages in negotiation.


1. Starting a negotiation
2. Exchanging offers and counteroffers
3. Persuading the other side
4. Compromising and confirming
5. Reaching a deal


We learned all five stages in brief and used them with classmates.
The agenda was about the role play in the negotiation. We did role play of seller and buyer and used target phrases. In this session seller starts the negotiation of the price and buyer react the price high or low. So in this way they continue their negotiation following the above stages and end the negotiation. Seller tries to sell something in high price, but the buyer wants to reduce the price of the product. They try to do win-win compromise.


After the negotiation of price we had the simulation of negotiations. I choose the buyer position that was working for Starbucks Coffee. I had to buy 5000 to 10,000 kg of Premium Coffee in the wholesale rate and I had to negotiate the deal with seller. I tried my best to reduce the price of a kg of Premium Coffee. All our classmates did the same role play in that session with a partner. And at last we gave the result to the teacher. I got to know that I was not so successful in win-win negotiation. So the session was such a good lesson for me. I learned how to negotiate with clients when dealing a contract. I hope that I will not do the same mistake when negotiation in my real business.


After the simulation of the negotiation, we applied the negotiation rules in Hall's cultural concepts. I have already written about the cultural concepts in my previous blogs.


I came to know that how cultures influence the business in a broad sense. So, before starting a business we have to learn the cultures of the world very well. After that we need the knowledge of business. So I request all the people who are reading this blog to study about the cultures and get knowledge of the business.


At last, I would like to thank Daijob.com and UCLA Extension Tokyo Center for providing me this opportunity to study Business English. And I would like to thank our dear teacher David Tedone who shared his great knowledge with us and my dear classmates who helped me to complete this course.


Thanks!

Presentation Time!

Our ninth session was about giving a presentation which we spent a long time preparing.
I was a little bit nervous before the presentation. It turned out I wasn't the only one who was nervous. All my friends said they were too before the presentation. In my case, I didn't feel confident because I was not fully prepared for it because I've been too busy with work these days. To my surprise, I did much better than I expected.

I gave a presentation about the Toyota Corporation and its future business. I had searched many websites including Toyota’s to try make my presentation good. I collected a lot of useful information about Toyota but my weak point was I did not make power point presentation well. Before the presentation, I read through the key points to follow to make use of them during my session.

After the presentation, we each looked back to how we did and self-assessed the good points and improvements that we needed to make. The good points with me were eye contacts, rhythm and smile. My weaknesses were I acted rather uneasy and the Power Point slides were short. My afterthought is I could have overcome those weaknesses had I prepared for it more thoroughly. I always feel that I really need more practice in presentation, which itself is a lesson to learn.

After the self-assessment, we had other two agendas for the day: UCLA Extension Course evaluation and our future goals. My thoughts are that learning about business English communication helped me a lot with improving my business English. I got a chance to study English as well as reviewing many things like financial information. Furthermore, I would like to work on my English so that I can enjoy my stay more when I visit an English speaking country in the future. I've promised myself I would study a lot harder in my spare time.

Regarding future goals, we asked each other questions and talked about our career goals and about the skills we need to make our dreams come true.

Thanks!

Preparation for Presentation and Communication

Our agendas for our eighth class were presentation skills, presentation practices, essential skills and communication styles.

First we reviewed our previous class which was about making rules for a meeting.
I already mentioned the set of rules to follow when having a meeting in my previous blog. Do you remember the important rules?
When we call a meeting first we have to have the purpose and the agenda of the meeting set. We need to establish who are the participants, timing, minute taker, chairperson in the meeting. After that we can have a meeting properly.
All these things are necessary to have a meeting. The most important thing for a project manager to do before the session begins is to provide the participants with information regarding the meeting.

After reviewing the rules we learned about presentation skills. We have to know the following key points to give a good presentation.

1. Consider the needs of audience
2. Organize the ideas logically
3. Use transitions
4. Smile
5. Eye contact
6. Speak with variation
7. Posture and gesture

If we do not know about these key points we cannot give a good presentation. If we cannot give a good presentation, we will not do well at meetings. So we learned these things briefly in our eighth session.

What is the difference between a good presentation and a bad presentation?

Giving a good presentation is not a simple task. We must be prepared physically and mentally before the presentation because we have to speak in front of people, usually in a foreign environment. We practiced giving presentations one by one and when we made any mistake, we received comments from our teacher.

In my case I never felt at ease standing in front of people and give a presentation. All in all, I think I did pretty well today because my classmates and my teacher were not new to me, but I still need more practice speaking in front of many people.

After practicing the presentation we learned communication styles.
It is not such a new topic but normally we do not really think about our communication styles. People communicate in different ways; systematic and organic, direct and diplomatic, formal and informal, inductive and deductive, head and heart, high context and low context, among colleagues and friends.

These communication styles are used in different kinds of presentation. Finding out about different styles of communication helps us to vary our ways in which give presentations to different kinds of people.

How would you describe your own communication style?
I think it depends on your nationality, culture and society you belong to.

Thanks!

Solving a problem and troubleshooting

Last week, I was busy preparing my final presentation, which was about Toyota Motor Corporation. I searched many websites to find out about the company. I found a lot of useful information related to the topic and I was busy with the preparation even on Saturday morning before I left for the class.
After sending the first draft to my teacher, I went to UCLA for my eighth class. The main agenda of that class was Problem Solving.

We face many problems in our daily lives, including that of business, family and friends. Whenever we face those problems we have to tackle them. Today in the lesson we took a look at solving business problems.

Before the problem solving we role-played interviewer and interviewee for a job interview. Its main purpose was to go over the stuff we did in the sixth session. Our goal was to select the right person for a full-time English teaching position at a trading company.

We had three candidates to choose from. All the groups tried to select the best candidate for the position It was not so easy a task. All the groups selected the same person and provided reasons for selecting that candidate. Unfortunately, that was the wrong one for the position according to the teacher.

After that, we practiced a dialog which was about solving a problem. We were in twos and each practiced the dialog.

How do you solve problems when you face them at work?

We face many problems at work and there's bound to be a best possible solution for every one of them. We took turns playing roles of a customer and a supplier in different situations.

Of course, I have faced and dealt with problems before but it's rather different when you are representing a company as you need to have a holistic view so this session was very meaningful.

After that, we looked at sample actions a project manager took to solve a problem he faced during a company meeting. It went like this – A project manager wanted to discuss about an agenda so he called for a meeting which he scheduled for 11 o'clock but no one turned up because everyone thought that was a waste of time. What kind of actions would I have taken if I were the manager?

We then discussed what kind of troubleshooting techniques would be applicable in our own groups and told the class the solutions we came up with.
I don't think I've ever faced such problems while working in Japan. I think Japanese companies are more institutionalized and well-mannered.

That's all for now.
Thanks!

Job Interviews and Resumes

Last Saturday we reviewed Financial Information and started looking at another cultural comparison. We did simulation of Financial Analysis at the beginning of the class and then moved onto analyzing income statement of Yahoo! Inc.

It was the first time for me to view financial information of the company and I found it very interesting.
Everyone knows Yahoo! Inc. to be a large internet portal where we can get a lot of information like employment and business opportunities, and investors relations through its search engine.

A lot of people use the portal site everyday for news, blog or emails but not many knows who founded Yahoo! Inc., its size and financial situation. Such information can be easily found if you searched for it on the internet but usually people don't care less about these things.

After that we did a new cultural comparison. It was about Individualism and Collectivism.
People in individualistic cultures focus more on their own personal interests while people in collectivist cultures are more concerned with the interests of the group.

In business, if we launch a product in collectivist cultures, people belonging to the same culture tend to buy the same product family so one can sell many products in that group but if we launched a product in individualistic cultures, such principle will not apply and cannot achieve large sales because people in individualist cultures focus on “I” and people in collectivist cultures focus on “We”.

United States, Switzerland and Australia are individualistic countries and China, Peru, Guatemala and Indonesia are collectivist countries.
Nepal is also in collectivist because there are many ethnic groups and languages and they emphasize belonging to groups, extended family relations, social loyalty, and community harmony. They stress a “we” identity and look after the in-group in exchange for loyalty.

What is the culture of your nation? Is it individualistic or collectivistic?

We also learnt that no culture or society is 100 percent collectivist or individualist.


After looking at culture, we learnt comparison skills. We practiced job interviews in English. There were two characters in an interview and we played both roles in turns.
Then, we had a small talk about the differences between the ways of writing Japanese resumes and English resumes. A lot of details are included in English resumes, such as work experience and other activities, whereas in Japanese, there are no details so you write all that on a different sheet of paper.
English resumes are to be in reverse chronological order (from new to old) but Japanese are usually in chronological order.

To sum up my day, I learnt many new things in Business English which are very important for any business person to be successful.

Graphs and Financial Statements

It was drizzling, mixed with snow outside and it was very cold. I was still playing chess when I realized that it was almost time to go and I hadn't even had my lunch. I quickly had lunch and left the house for UCLA extension Tokyo Center. I could not believe there were so many people wandering around in Shinjyuku in the cold winter rain on a Saturday.


It was our fifth session that day and during the BEC course, I learnt a lot about the customs of Business English. Walking into the class I noticed there were today's agendas on the white board. The first one was to analyze graphs and explain in details what each one meant. We studied bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts first and then continued to look at real-life figures of a company and briefly explained its stock chart.
I'm getting pretty good at this business of analyzing data trends!


In every class we do a little bit of Cultural Studies and that day, we looked at culture in terms of gender and predominancy. It is said we can find out whether your culture of a country or your company is predominantly masculine or feminine by looking at the roles given to men and women in the commune.
In my opinion, most of Asian corporations are predominantly masculine because generally males have authoritative roles and they have power over others there.
Is the culture of your nation or your company predominantly masculine or feminine? I think if you have read my past blog articles, you'll understand that where I come from is the former.


Our next agenda was Financial Information. We were handed out dialogues regarding financial information to read and practice and then we briefly learnt about income statements and balance sheets.
I had the knowledge of financial statements from a management course I enrolled in at the University of Nepal but it's already been 10 years since then and I had forgotten almost everything about them!


After the class my classmates and I decided to go for tea but some of us had prior engagements after the class. Only four of us stayed behind and we began looking for cafés. We went into more than two cafés but none had seats for four. Most of the seats were already taken because it was cold and raining outside and people were trying to stay warm drinking hot tea and coffee.
We decided to go to Renoir Café but the place was also full and we had to wait for a few minutes to be seated. After getting our seats, we discussed about financial statements over hot coffee. Everything seemed clear to me after talking with my classmates.


For me, last Saturday was an amazing day. I got a chance to refresh my memory of my schooling days in Nepal and I feel I got closer to my new friends!


I hope you got to taste a bit of my life in Tokyo after reading this blog.


Thanks!

Presentation and simulation of dilemma

In the beginning of the fourth class, we went through and revised our presentation materials for “The Dilemma of Northwest Land Company “in our own groups.

After that we had a discussion about simulation of dilemma concerning sexism in Africa. This dilemma was about a woman who was in Kenya for work. When she was there she felt that her clients treated her differently because of her gender. Her boss would say things like, “My lady” and “My cute assistant” in front of other local African clients.
The agenda of the discussion was to imagine that you are a woman in Africa and come up with ways to tackle the problem and discuss the downsides and upsides of your solutions. We were to find the best possible solution and present it in front of the class.

All the other groups did very well but our group didn't get to narrow down our ideas to just one so I don't think we succeeded. There were three people in our group and we didn't decide who was to be the minute taker and the chairperson so everyone just started firing away and no one summed up our ideas.

I would like to talk here more about the gender issues and sexism in my country, Nepal. Are there any problem like that in your country?
In our case, it was very intense. Most of the parents used to only send their sons to school and not their daughters. People thought that women would only be doing house work after getting married so they don't need any education. It'd just be waste of money and time.

As you can see, Nepal was a male predominance country. It was rare for any woman to be given high-ranking positions. Things have changed now and women are educated more but they are still treated differently from men.
As far as I know, this kind of discrimination is still around in many countries, even in highly developed countries.

After the simulation, we went through cultural topics. I already wrote about my culture and culture in general in my past blog articles but we got a chance to learn about terms like Mono Chronic Culture, Poly Chronic Culture, High Context Culture and Low Context Culture.

After that, we learned how to read graphs and data trends. We gave presentations using graphs one by one. Some of my classmates presented the number of hours they studied English per week and number of years they studied English in their lives.
In my turn, I presented the number of hours I spent playing games last week. I calculated the hours of playing chess, Frogger and Stunt Dirt Bike last week and made a line graph. I was a little bit nervous giving the presentation because I don't give presentations even at work. I think a lot of you also feel the same when giving presentation in front of people.

Giving presentations using graphs is a good way to convey information. We can use graphs in many fields like IT, Science , Medical, Agriculture, etc. I realized it is beneficial to learn to use and read graphs and data trends in Business.


Thanks!

Brainstorming

Hi all.
I hope that you are all still enjoying reading my blog :)
Let me tell you about my last week and my activities in BEC class.

I usually get up around 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays. Don’t think that I am lazy because I have to work until 10p.m. every day so I try to get as much sleep on the weekend.

If you have been in Japan for some time, you'd probably have notice that a lot of people on the train read newspapers or magazines, or do homework if you are a student. Like all the other stereotypical Japanese people, I tried doing my homework; I read a book about dilemma of an American company, practiced some phrases which were mainly used in business meetings. That's how I usually make use of my time on the train. Prep on the train = more sleep!

To get to J.F Oberlin University where my BEC classes are held, I need to go through Shinjuku station. Shinjuku is one of the busiest cities in Tokyo and there are a lot of areas for entertainment, business and shopping. Shinjuku station has 8 railways and 3 metros running through it.
When I first arrived in Japan I was astonished to see so many people in Shinjuku but having lived in Japan for some time it's already become everyday scenery for me.

In my third lesson we discussed about a video we watched. It was about the woman who has a fear of the unknown and she becomes very nervous during a business meeting. Fear of the unknown is not very uncommon and our teacher told us 99% of the people feel nervous when encountering someone new.
I am sure a lot of you feel uneasy around strangers. I know I do!

After discussing about the video we practiced “Business in Action – debating and solving an issue”. I think it is important to exchange conflicting ideas when trying to come up with a solution. Another approach is to brainstorm. We started listing ideas which turned out to be quite exciting! My classmates came up with many good ideas.
After brainstorming, we practiced looking at advantages and disadvantages of things, such as life in town vs. city, and working for a company vs. running your own business.

In this class I got to learn that in English business scenes, brainstorming can be a very useful way of tackling a problem.

Thanks everyone for reading my blog!

Attending an English Business Meeting and know about the cultures

On Friday we had a small drinking party with my colleagues so I could not sleep much that night. It was already about 2o'clock when I got back home.

That was my second day in the class room and everybody was in the class room already in groups. May be they were waiting for me. I felt a bit uneasy in the class room because of the hangover but I was not so nervous compared to my first class because I got to know everyone. After I entered the class room the teacher started teaching right away. Firstly, we reviewed the first session which was about comparing cultures.

What is culture for you?
Culture means different lifestyles, traditions, languages, food we eat, business practices, social life, etc. Everywhere in the world, we can see different cultures. If you are in Nepal you can see there are many different cultures and different ethnic groups. In Nepal there are 61 ethnic groups and 70 spoken languages and dialects. Now you can imagine that how many different cultures there are in a single country. When it comes to religion there are mainly two religions in Nepal: Hinduism and Buddhism. And when you think about how many different cultures there are in this world, you'll begin to see how diverse the meaning of the word “Culture” really is.

After the revision of the first lesson, we learned about business meetings. It was a role-play lesson and there were 4 characters and we took turns playing all 4 roles.

Why do we have business meetings, anyway?
Is it really necessary for business? In my own opinion business meetings are important to run one's business properly. There are many things that have to be decided in a set amount of time and not only one person can decide everything. There are rules, customers, employees, etc in business so when we are making important decisions such as a launch of a product or when we are trying to close a deal we have to call a business meeting.

In my case I have experienced Japanese business meetings before but participating in an English business meeting was new to me. We learned that everyone should speak and provide ideas concerning the agenda within a given amount of time and I found it difficult to summarize everyone's opinions and come up with a consensus. Being a chairperson was a difficult task because it was tough to provide alternatives and draw a conclusion at the end. When I was the chairperson it was really difficult for me to reach a conclusion. Maybe I didn't fully understanding the importance of that role.

In that lesson we also learned about the high and low context cultures. We also learned about the person who came up with the high and low context cultures concept. Implicit and explicit communication was new to me. I learnt that low-context is implicit and high-context is explicit communication.

After the class, my classmates and I went to a restaurant for a chitchat. It was a chance for me to make new friends in Japan. I love making new friends and socializing with them. They were really friendly and an active listeners. I think we can find out more about other people through casual conversation.
The conclusion of my Saturday was that it was one of the most wonderful days of my life. I enjoyed having new experiences. Everybody learns something new everyday and for me, it was a day of great discoveries.

Thanks everyone for reading my blog!

A great opportunity for me to study Business English !

First of all I'd like to thank WorkJapan.com for providing me this opportunity to participate in UCLA Extension Tokyo Center Program. I am going to write about the Business Essentials Course in which I am enrolled.
Learning Business English is a great opportunity for me because I have never got such a wonderful chance to improve my Business English.


I would like to let you know that I am an Asian and I have never been to any English speaking country before and I have never studied English in an English speaking environment.
I do not know that what my English Language Proficiency Level is at the moment. I have not tested my English Language Proficiency before.


So I am expecting that I will improve my Business English through this course. I am really excited to have this opportunity to study in UCLA Extension Tokyo Center because the teacher is from Native English Speaking Country and he has many years teaching experience. Before joining this program I saw his profile on UCLA website.


How was my first day of the class?
I think everyone would like to know the experiences of my all the classes. Today I am going to write about my first day of the class. First we introduced ourselves to the class.
After that we got some textbooks from the teacher. There were Business English Communication Essentials and Listening Exercises for Business Essentials books.


In Business English Communication Essentials we learnt how to make a telephone appointment with the client and what kind of phrases are used in telephone conversations.
And we used target phrases in practical with the classmates.


After that we practiced socializing and small talk which is really necessary in business and that are not directly related to work.


We also got a chance to learn about English culture. Before participating in this class I used to think that culture is only a traditional thing but I realized it is the root of all common practices.


Why am I interested in this program?
English is spoken all over the world. About 350 million people speak English. I am a non native English speaker and I would like to improve my Business English Communication skill and I think it would be best if I'm taught by a native speaker. If I want to be successful in international business, learning English is incredibly important. English allows me to communicate with more people in my field of business.


Why is Business English necessary?
We live in a time of globalization. Trade, foreign investment, capital flow, and the spread of technology all require Business English. If you do not have knowledge of Business English it is very difficult to be in any international business.


What kinds of benefit can I get from this course?
I hope I will learn quite a bit about Business English in my 10 classes.
I am not used to writing blog in English at all so it is difficult for me to find vocabularies and phrases. I am really very thankful for everyone reading my blog and I hope that you will enjoy it!