The plan was ambitious, but few believed it to be reckless. Back in 2002, Fujio Cho, president of Toyota, set a goal that would see the automaker take a 15% global market share by 2010. At the time, Toyota had already captured 10.7% of the market, and had new plants on the way in the United States, China and throughout Asia, along with dozens of new models already in development.

Within six years, Toyota would emerge as the largest automaker in the world and the standard by which the industry judged efficiency, quality and manufacturing excellence.

But the last year has seen Toyota's preeminent position undermined by a dramatic drop in global sales, which fell 26% in 2009 amid a prolonged economic recession, along with a worldwide recall of 7.6 million vehicles, spread across five continents.

Toyota now is under fire from U.S. lawmakers and the Transportation Department, who are asking for proof that problems that could cause its cars to speed up unexpectedly were limited to floor mats and sticking pedals -- and not its computer systems.

This has created a groundswell of negative publicity, with reports in the media suggesting that Toyota's focus on rapid growth came at a cost to its reputation for quality.

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Toyota's recall is certainly significant, but the conclusions drawn are wildly off-base, says Jeffrey Liker, a professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and the author of the best-selling book "The Toyota Way.

"What you're seeing is hasty generalizations," says Liker. "Basically, people are hearing something that is somewhat vague, they don't know the details and so they're generalizing a broader phenomenon. The reality is a lot of those generalizations seem almost silly."

As a case in point, Liker cites Toyota's issue with accelerator pedals. Two auto suppliers, CTS and Denso, manufactured these components. CTS, however, is the only supplier to have had these problems.

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