Toyota’s Recent Factory Shutdowns Caused By “Insufficient Disk Space” On Servers

In late August, Toyota halted production at all 14 of its Japanese factories for 24 hours, and we now know why. In a statement, the company clarified that it wasn’t a cyber attack, but instead something far less sinister - a lack of hard drive space.

The issue, which involved multiple servers not being able to process parts orders, stemmed from maintenance work carried out the day before.

As explained by Toyota’s statement:

“During the maintenance procedure, data that had accumulated in the database was deleted and organized, and an error occurred due to insufficient disk space, causing the system to stop. Since these servers were running on the same system, a similar failure occurred in the backup function, and a switchover could not be made. This led to the suspension of domestic plant operations.”

After the data went to a server with more space on 29 August, the system was back up and running, allowing all the affected plants to restart production on 30 August. “Countermeasures have also been put in place by replicating and verifying the situation,” Toyota says, which should help avoid similar incidents in the future. “We will review our maintenance procedures and strengthen our efforts to prevent a recurrence, so that we can deliver as many vehicles to our customers as soon as possible," the statement adds.

The manufacturer hasn’t said what kind of impact the shutdown will have caused, but it’s sure to have been very costly, with domestic production accounting for about a third of its total output, according to Reuters. “We would like to apologize once again to our customers, suppliers, and related parties for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our domestic plants as a result of the malfunction,” Toyota said. 

Toyota’s 14 Japanese factories also had to simultaneously shut down in February 2022 after parts supplier Kojima Industries reported a virus on one of its servers.