Mjölby, Sweden

Norio Wakabayashi

Norio Wakabayashi has been appointed as chairman of Toyota Material Handling Europe AB (TMHE). He succeeds outgoing Hirooki Fujiwara who has returned to Japan to take up a new and challenging role in Toyota Material Handling's headquarters in Takahama, Japan.
Wakabayashi brings extensive experience to his new role, having worked in the Toyota organisation with a strong focus on Europe for over 30 years. He worked initially within Area Operations for Europe in the Toyota Motor Corporation. His focus moved to materials handling in 1991 and during the period 2003-2012, he was based in Europe working as assistant to the president of Toyota Industrial Equipment Europe (2003-5, Brussels), then as president of Toyota's German operations (2005-7, Duisburg) before moving to Italy as president and then chairman of operations in that market.

COLUMBUS, IN, United States

Cesar Jimenez

Toyota Industrial Equipment has promoted Cesar Jimenez to director, product planning, technical services and warranty. He is the newest member of Toyota's executive team.
Jimenez began his career at Toyota as a college intern in the summer of 1996. Since then, he has held a number of positions, including national product planning manager and most recently, national product planning and training manager. He has been instrumental in the successful launch of more than 25 materials handling products during his career at Toyota.
He currently serves as the Industrial Truck Association's vice chairman of the energy storage systems subcommittee and also is a member of the general engineering committee.