Toyota says August plant shutdown caused by computer glitch

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Toyota said Wednesday that the temporary shutdown of 14 plants in late August was caused by a computer malfunction and not by cyberattacks.

The company said the error occurred when computer systems were undergoing maintenance on Aug. 27 and an issue with the server caused the system that helps sort orders for vehicle parts to fail.

"The system malfunction was caused by the unavailability of some multiple servers that process parts orders. As for the circumstances, regular maintenance work was performed on Aug. 27, the day before the malfunction occurred. 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," Toyota said.

The company specified that though a computer failure was behind the production suspension, a cyber attack was not the cause of the delay.

"We would like to reaffirm that the system malfunction was not caused by a cyberattack, and apologize to all parties for any concern this may have caused," the company said.

Though the glitch caused an interruption, the systems were back up and running within two days.

Toyota has seen strong sales in 2023, with the company saying sales were up 7.8% in July.

"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 in our production order system at the end of last month," Toyota said.