Australia's major distributor of counterbalanced forklifts, Toyota Industries Corporation Australia (TICA), is now well advanced with integrating parent company Toyota Industries Corporation's (TICO) three materials handling equipment brands through one channel.
TICA is the first TICO subsidiary to undertake integration of the three brands, Toyota Industrial Equipment, BT Lift Trucks and Raymond Forklifts.
The Toyota Materials Handling Group is developing a strategy for the integration of TICO brands in all major regions and markets.
A TICA statement said the "one-stop shop" was the next "logical strategy". TICA said Australia was ideally placed for the integration, after historically using both the US and European styles of warehousing. That contrasted with the rest of the world where the major and mature markets had evolved using either the European or US styles.
Toyota European representative Jeffrey Schenck said the Toyota and BT brands were still marketed separately in Europe, except in Finland and Sweden. In those two countries, distributors marketed Toyota brand counterbalanced forklifts and BT brand warehouse equipment.
Schenck said the Raymond brand was not marketed in Europe.
Toyota US representative Melinda Beckett-Maines said there were no current plans to market the three brands together in the US.
TICA said all Australian dealerships would sell and support Toyota forklifts, BT Lift Trucks and Raymond brands under one roof by April 2006, providing the widest choice of materials handling equipment products in the industry.
The statement said integration of the BT parts operation into Toyota Materials Handling allowed improved "speed to market".
The Raymond integration had triggered a new operation for parts.
"The integration of Raymond information into the Toyota system enabled the establishment of a completely new operation providing real-time analysis of customer needs, stocking levels and work supply," the statement said.
TICA said the strategy, while still in the early stages of execution, had been extremely well received by TICA customers.
Australia will share integration information with other countries and regions as part of Toyota's continuous improvement process.
The first Australian distributor to start sales and after-sales support of the three Toyota brands was Toyota Materials Handling (NSW). It was followed by TMH Queensland, TMH Western Australia (BT and Toyota only), TMH Victoria and TMH South Australia, in April.