Toyota, the Japanese automaker, has halted operations at all of its domestic assembly plants owing to a manufacturing system issue.
The action has effectively halted domestic production at the world’s largest automaker.
Because of the problem, the company has been unable to order components.
According to a company spokeswoman, the company is investigating the problem but does not believe it is the result of a cyber assault.
Toyota halted operations at 12 of its 14 Japanese assembly factories on Tuesday morning.
Later that day, a spokeswoman said that production at all 14 plants will be halted.
The company has not yet stated when it plans to resume operations or how much production would be lost as a result of the shutdown.
The 14 plants are estimated to account for roughly one-third of Toyota’s global output.
The stoppage comes as Toyota’s Japanese production was resuming following a string of problems.
Its operations were harmed last year when one of its vendors was hacked.
The one-day outage resulted in a loss of around 13,000 automobiles.
Toyota also paused operations at some of its Japanese production lines last year owing to the coronavirus lockdown in China’s economic capital Shanghai.
“Due to the impact of the semiconductor shortage, we announced our revised production plan for May,” Toyota explained at the time.
Toyota pioneered the so-called “just-in-time” production strategy, which reduces costs but can be subject to issues if component supplies are disrupted.
