Toyota ’s North American operations are about to face the loss of three key top-level executives in the coming two months. The retirement of the three executives is believed to be a result of the executives’ desire to retire, and not as a result of pressure from Toyota board members.
The announcement of the retirement of three key executives comes at a crucial time in which Toyota is already facing significant challenges.
Toyota is facing its second consecutive year to post an annual loss, which will be only the second time ever in the company’s history. The U.S. market has slumped dramatically for all automakers in 2009, but Toyota suffered larger decreases than both Honda and Nissan .
Although Toyota has offered no official explanations for the upcoming departures of Dave Danzer, Irv Miller and Steve Sturm, a spokeswoman said that the executives were all “of retirement age,” which is likely to means late 50s to early 60s.
Danzer currently functions as the group vice president of strategic and product planning, and previously held leadership positions for advertising, merchandising, marketing and customer relations. Danzer first joined Toyota in 1985 as the national manager of advertising programs, and is known as of the few true “car guys” in Toyota, with a respectable collection of collector cars, according to AutomotiveNews.
Miller, Toyota’s group vice president for environmental and public affairs since 2001 is also set to retire. In his time with Toyota Miller has held various management positions in field sales, market representation, merchandising and fleet. Miller is also credited for leading Toyota’s entry into e-commerce with the “Office of the Web” program.
Sturn serves Toyota as group vice president of Americas strategic research and planning and corporate communications out of New York. Sturn previously held positions in both management and executive roles for product development, pricing, logistics, sales, planning, distribution and corporate planning since joining Toyota in 1981.
Toyota has already named Jim Wiseman, currently involved in Toyota North America’s engineering and manufacturing business as Sturn’s replacement. Wiseman has been with Toyota for 20 years to date.
Between the three executives set to retire, each has been with Toyota for at least 24 years.
