Toyota Production Grinds to a Halt Due to Epic IT Failure

Toyota, one of the world’s leading automakers, recently had to suspend operations in 12 of its 14 Japan-based factories due to a massive IT failure, resulting in a daily production loss of approximately 13,000 cars. The problem? The carmaker ran out of hard drive space.

BleepingComputer reports that Toyota found itself grappling with a significant operational disruption caused by an IT systems failure. The issue, which occurred during a planned maintenance event on August 27, 2023, led to the halting of operations across the majority of Toyota’s Japan-based car assembly plants. The company has confirmed that the root cause of the problem was its database servers running out of storage space.

“To all concerned parties, we apologize for the concerns raised. We would like to reiterate that this system malfunction was not due to a cyber attack,” said a statement released on Toyota’s Japanese news portal.

The malfunction had a domino effect on Toyota’s production ordering system, rendering it incapable of planning and executing any production tasks. What exacerbated the situation was that both the main servers and backup systems operate on the same system. This made a switchover impossible, leading to an inevitable halt in factory operations.

The crisis was eventually resolved on August 29, 2023, when Toyota’s IT team prepared a larger capacity server to accept the partially transferred data. This allowed the company’s engineers to restore the production ordering system, enabling the plants to resume operations.

The event also adds to a series of IT-related issues that Toyota has faced this year. Earlier, the automaker reported system misconfigurations that led to potential data leaks, impacting millions of customers. Researchers also discovered API flaws in Toyota’s apps, leading to unauthorized access to confidential data.

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