The Greta Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami had caused disruption on infrastructure and production capacity of Japan. This shock led to the following chain of events:-

• An abrupt drop on Japanese exports of both cars and spare parts to the USA
• Import of cars and spares from competitor markets like Mexico and Canada
• Non-availability of Japanese cars and spares in the US Market
• Overtime in production facilities of competitor companies and in Japanese plants outside Japan
• Questions for also raised on Just-in time production philosophy of Japanese to minimise inventory
• Questions about progress

A summary of the changes are elaborated in the sketch below.