By design, "accessibility" is the one word that best characterizes our corporate philosophy toward supplier diversity. Everyone involved in our program sits on the other side of an open door: from our Program Coordinator, who often introduces MBEs into our system, to the buyers who actually purchase goods and services from suppliers, to our President & CEO, who regularly visits many of our suppliers' facilities. Making ourselves readily available to MBEs and taking care to do the small things right such as returning phone calls promptly and answering questions thoroughly sends the message to MBEs that our ears and our minds, like our doors, are always open.

We are pleased that during the brief period of our program's existence, our planning process has given us the direction and focus to produce both the hard numbers that translate directly into new business for MBEs and the less quantifiable, but no less important, goodwill (public recognition, awards, etc.) that sets the stage for even greater future accomplishments.

It also bears saying that although we are pleased, we are not satisfied with our progress. Therefore, we have set for ourselves some very aggressive goals. The establishment of our North American manufacturing support office enables us to better coordinate the Supplier Diversity activities of our individual facilities and, we expect, to realize some potential synergies that simply went unnoticed before. Partnership, commitment, national scope, new initiatives and growth: these are the keys to the success of the Supplier Diversity Program at Toyota. Honestly, however, we prefer to think of them as mile markers along a highway called "continuous improvement". Perhaps it's because of the business we're in, but we've always believed that real success is a journey, not a destination.

Procedures
We are glad that you have taken an interest in our program. The procedures for becoming a potential supplier to Toyota involves three simple steps.

1. Completing and faxing the Minority Business Datasheet with a copy of your MBE certification to us.

2. This step will take approximately 2 - 3 weeks. During this step, we will review your information, add your company to our MBE database and provide you, by return mail, with details on selling to TMMNA. We will also send you the contact information for the buyer (or buyers) of the products and services you sell so that you may contact them directly.

3. The third and final step is using the information provided to you in step two and contacting your appropriate buyer to determine what current opportunities there are for your organization.