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Although Toyota now produces and sells automobiles in many other countries and regions, the company actually globalised quite slowly. By 1982, Toyota had become the third largest automobile manufacturer in the world but its overseas production ratio remained conspicuously low up until the 1980s and even in the 1990s. As a result, the company became the center of attention during the international trade conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. This article examines why Toyota did not expand its overseas production facilities more swiftly.It focuses firstly on internal factors hampering Toyota’s overseas operations which need to be taken into consideration in addition to external factors, such as foreign pressure. We thus examine Toyota’s reorganisation of its export business and the formation of the new Toyota Motor Corporation, before moving on to look in detail at production issues. As early as the early 1970s, Toyota digitalised its “Bill of Material” (BOM) as a Specifications Management System (SMS) to ensure the effective production of cars in Japan. However, until the mid- 1990s, data transmission across borders was still limited, which hindered the company’s globalisation to a degree. In order to adapt the SMS to more advanced information and communication technology, Toyota changed over to a new SMS by the early 2000s. This new SMS allowed Toyota to launch the “Innovative International Multi-Purpose Vehicle” project in the early 2000s.