After nearly a decade as president of Toyota Material Handling, U.S.A., Shankar Basu is stepping into the role of chairman and CEO of the company. He hands the reigns of president over to Brett Wood, formerly the company's vice president of marketing. Toyota is No. 1 in Modern's annual ranking of lift truck suppliers.

These moves are happening during a turbulent economic time, so Modern asked how these changes would help protect the company and its customers.

Basu said Wood's experience working with a variety of departments will bring in more diverse products, such as hybrids and fuel cells, to the North American marketplace.

“In the spirit of kaizen, service to dealers and customers has to change,” Basu said. “This means more service packages, and that will grow with Brett's presidency.”

Wood said there would not be any major changes in product and support with the new leadership.

“In fact, I'll be listening to our customers, our partners and our factories so we can keep our ship heading in the right direction,” he said. “We just launched a strategic alliance with PosiCharge, a fast-charging company. Also, we have been building tow tractors in Japan for several years. Our business in the U.S. has picked up enough to justify local production at our factory in Columbus, Indiana.”

Toyota's business is growing beyond industrial trucks to encompass many facets of materials handling, Basu said. In the next five years, the company will move toward being materials handling solution providers, with racking, shelving and CAD/CAM capabilities.

“My gut says those businesses will come 65% from alliances and the rest from things we're not doing in the U.S. today but are being built by Toyota in Japan for the Japanese market,” Basu said.

Other long-term plans include making more use of the synergy Toyota has been building with its sister company, the Raymond Corp., helping the Toyota dealer network stay profitable during these economic times and preparing as competitors from China establish a foothold with low-cost product in the U.S. market.

“We need to be prepared to handle that with high levels of service and value, and even develop a second level of product that meets them head on,” Basu said.