TOKYO — Toyota will not return to pre-disaster production levels until the end of the year, the president of the Japanese automaker said Friday.
The time frame was the longest yet described by the company in assessing the continued effects of the supply chain disruptions caused by last month’s destructive quake and tsunami.
Although Toyota’s 17 plants in Japan escaped the disaster relatively unscathed, factory lines are working at only half volume here and at 40 percent overseas as vital suppliers in Japan’s worst-hit areas struggle to restart operations.
Toyota indicated this week that its Japanese operations would remain at half-speed through at least June 3 but was unwilling to speculate beyond that. And it had said Tuesday that it would cut production at its North American plants by 75 percent in the next six weeks to conserve its limited supply of parts made in Japan.
The two other main Japanese automakers, Nissan and Honda, also are operating at only about half of normal production volumes in Japan.
At a briefing for reporters in Tokyo on Friday, Akio Toyoda, president and chief executive of Toyota, said he expected to ramp up production gradually in Japan, starting in July, as more parts makers came back on line.
Toyota will boost production at its overseas plants a month later, in August, to allow time for the parts to arrive from Japan, Toyoda said.
Production at home and overseas will return to predisaster levels at all factory lines and across all vehicle models by November or December, Toyoda said.
“The damage has been so widespread in this unprecedented calamity that its economic effect is being felt throughout Japan and in every industry,” Toyoda said.
He added that the automaker had dispatched employees to help recovery work at some of its most vital parts makers.
The automaker estimates it faces shortages of about 150 critical parts, down from about 500 immediately after the March 11 quake. Atsushi Niimi, executive vice president in charge of production, said Toyota had switched suppliers in some cases to speed the recovery.
He said it had been a bitter revelation to Toyota that its cars, even those produced overseas, still relied so heavily on Japanese parts.
“We need to procure more parts overseas, and we also urge our suppliers to make more forays outside Japan,” Niimi said.
