Honda may spend $650 mln to restore flood-hit Thai plant - Nikkei

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co <7267.T> will completely overhaul its flood-hit factory in Thailand in a project that could cost more than 50 billion yen, the Nikkei business daily reported on Sunday.

Thailand's worst floods in half a century late last year hit Honda the hardest among Japanese automakers, with its 240,000-cars-a-year plant in the Ayutthaya Province in central Thailand submerged under water.

Honda, Japan's No. 3 car producer, has already started replacing equipment with the aim of resuming output in April, the Nikkei said.

Refurbishing the flood-hit factory will almost be the equivalent of building a plant from scratch, the Nikkei quoted an unnamed Honda executive as saying.

Honda may receive payment from insurers, which are still assessing damage at the factory, as early as in the current financial year to March, lessening Honda's financial burden to a certain extent, the Nikkei said.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

Source;
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/wire-news/honda-may-spend-36650-mln-to-restore-flood-hit-thai-plant-nikkei_651354.html

Honda Plans $500 Million Car Plant in Mexico, Financiero Says

Honda Motor Co., Japan’s third- largest automaker, plans to invest at least $500 million to build a car factory in Mexico, El Financiero newspaper reported.

The plant will likely be located in Salamanca, a city in the central state of Guanajuato, and construction would begin next year, El Financiero reported, citing Mexican Economy Ministry officials it didn’t identify by name.

Honda’s press office in Mexico City declined to comment on the report by El Financiero. Nikkei newspaper in Japan said earlier this week that Honda will build an auto plant in Mexico that produces the Fit compact car and will begin operation in 2014.

Honda has a plant in Mexico’s southwestern state of Jalisco, according to its website.

Source;
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-02/honda-plans-500-million-car-plant-in-mexico-financiero-says.html

Honda Greensburg plant gets survey's highest award

Honda Greensburg was named one of the world's best car assembly plants

.J.D. Power and Associates, a research firm that hands out an annual prize likened to the Academy Awards of vehicle manufacturing, on Thursday singled out the southeast Indiana factory.

Honda Greensburg received the researcher's highest rating, the Platinum Plant Quality award.The Greensburg plant, which assembles the Civic car, scored 24 problems per 100 vehicles, compared with an industry average of 107 problems per 100 vehicles.

"It's a real feather in the cap for a plant that is that new," said Ed Miller, American Honda Motor Co. senior manager for corporate affairs.

Honda opened the plant in 2008 after selecting 900 workers from about 30,000 job applications. Honda is now recruiting a second shift of about 1,000 workers to start late this year.

Honda plants differ from Toyota's and General Motors' by relying slightly less on automation and more on hands-on effort on the assembly line.

To obtain the results, J.D. Power surveyed 73,000 cars and trucks of all makes in the hands of buyers. The survey covers initial problems detected within 90 days of purchase of model year 2011vehicles.

Greensburg was tied for the Platinum award by Toyota's Lexus RX assembly line at Cambridge, Ontario, and Toyota Kyushu 2 in Japan, which produces the Lexus ES, IS and RX. Each plant scored 24 defects per 100 vehicles."

These results are an important demonstration of our focus on the customer and the tireless efforts put forth by Honda associates throughout our organization -- in R&D, in manufacturing and in sales -- toreflect the voice of our customers and to exceed their high expectations of Honda and Acura," Tetsuo Iwamura, chief executive of American Honda Motor Co., said in a statement.

Source;
http://www.indystar.com/article/20110624/BUSINESS/106240345/Honda-Greensburg-plant-gets-survey-s-highest-award

Honda investing $97 million at Lincoln

TALLADEGA COUNTY — Honda Manufacturing of Alabama in Lincoln is investing $97 million in its facility creating 20 new jobs.

The announcement of the investment came during the County Commission meeting Monday night. The commission approved a tax abatement for HMA for the investment.

Warren Mathews, an attorney from Burr & Foreman, a law firm that represents HMA, presented the request for tax abatement to the commission.

The overall project will consist of new investments that will increase current production capacity and support the transfer of the Acura MDX luxury sport utility vehicle to Alabama in 2013.

According to Mark Morrison, manager of HMA’s Corporate Affairs and Communication, at the conclusion of the project, and combined with the previous project HMA announced in March, HMA’s total capital investment in Lincoln will grow to more than $1.7 billion.

In another matter, Edward Jennings, a longtime resident of Hindman Lane in Talladega, paid another visit to the commission in regards to the immobility he believes the commission has taken with his previous concerns.

Source;
http://www.dailyhome.com/view/full_story/13187827/article-Honda-investing--97-million-at-Lincoln?instance=home_right

Canadian Driver: Honda Civic – 36 years in Canada

Alliston, Ontario, Honda Plant

By Paul Williams

Photo Gallery:Honda, Alliston, Ontario

While many vehicle models (and some manufacturers) come and go, the Honda Civic celebrates its 36th anniversary in Canada in 2009, where it has been an unequivocal success story.

The first year for Civic in Canada was 1973, with the company selling 747 1973 models here. Annual sales in Canada have risen to 72,463 Civics in 2008, at which time it was the best selling vehicle (cars or trucks) in the country. It was also the top-selling passenger car in Canada for the 11th consecutive year.

Another milestone, the five-millionth vehicle rolled off the assembly line at Honda Canada’s Alliston, Ontario manufacturing plant in April, 2009. Fittingly, it was a Honda Civic.

Honda Canada Manufacturing (HCM) has been a fixture in the Simcoe region of Ontario (about 100 kilometres north of Toronto) since 1986. It’s one of several Honda manufacturing facilities outside of Japan that the company has established over the past 30-plus years. It comprises two plants and a new engine manufacturing facility that opened in 2008.

Honda Canada Public Relations Manager Richard Jacobs says that even now, it comes as a surprise to many people that Honda Civics (both sedans and coupes) are built in Canada.

“And not only Civics,” he adds. HCM also builds the Acura MDX, CSX and ZDX, with 79 per cent of our output exported to the United States.”

Operating at full capacity, HCM builds 390,000 vehicles in Alliston annually, and 200,000 four-cylinder engines. In 2008 Honda was the second largest builder of combined cars and trucks in Canada, employing 4,500 Associates. The facility sources parts from 268 North American suppliers, of which 21 per cent are Canadian.

Visitors to HCM will immediately notice that plant associates (workers) all wear the same simple white uniforms (jacket and pants). In fact, every employee at HCM wears the uniform, including senior management (Jon Minto, Vice President of HCM, addressed our group our group of invited journalists while sporting the same corporate whites). The egalitarian theme extends to the parking lot, where there are no executive spaces, and to the cafeteria, which all employees use. Senior management, therefore, are regularly accessible to workers in the day-to-day operation of the plant.

On the shop floor, associates work in teams that perform a set of tasks as each vehicle moves along the assembly line. Team members rotate through the tasks every two weeks, which has the dual benefit of reducing boredom and increasing skills and experience.

Over the years, the vehicles that HCM manufactures have evolved dramatically. Back in 1973, for example, the Japan-built Honda Civic was powered by a four-cylinder, 1,200-cc engine that made 60 horsepower. The three-door hatchback car (there was no sedan) weighed a mere 640 kilograms and rode on 12-inch wheels.

By 1986, weight for the Civic Hatchback was up to around 800 kg, and the 1.5-litre engine made 90 horsepower.

At 1,200 kg, today’s Civic weighs almost twice as much as its 1973 ancestor, and is bigger in all dimensions than the (formerly) midsize Honda Accord of 1986. It uses a 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine that makes 140 hp and rides on 15-inch wheels (16 and 17-inch wheels are available). There is no Civic hatchback available in North America anymore, although auto writers look wistfully at the Type R GT 3-Door available in Europe, along with other interesting Civic variations that are not offered in Canada.

One thing that doesn’t seem to have changed is the design of those white uniforms. Functional as they may be, they appear to be the very same style as those worn by workers in Japanese plants 40 years ago. I think they could use an update.

Paul Williams is an Ottawa-based automotive writer and senior editor for CanadianDriver. He is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC).

Source;

http://www.canadiandriver.com/2009/10/26/feature-honda-civic-36-years-in-canada.htm#

Oldest Honda plant shifts to meeting green demand

SAYAMA, Japan — Honda has adjusted production as global demand shifts to small and greener models, turning its oldest Japanese plant into an assembly line for the Fit subcompact for the U.S. market.
But the Saitama plant, which employs 5,500 people, is also showing signs of hard times - running just a single shift instead of the previous two shifts, halving overall plant production to 1,100 vehicles a day.
The Honda Motor Co. factory, shown to reporters Wednesday, used to mostly make bigger models like the Odyssey minivan and Accord sedan.
The plant, which opened in 1964 in this Tokyo suburb, has successfully responded to shifting consumer tastes, as the recent rise in gas prices and concerns about global warming make smaller models like the Fit more in demand, according to Honda.
It began mass-producing the Fit for U.S. export in April, transferring some of that production from another Japanese plant, in Suzuka, central Japan, which is too busy these days churning out the hit Insight hybrid.
Tomonori Arai, a general manager, said Honda was able to efficiently move production because it has standardized robotics parts and other assembly procedures.
The efforts to unify assembly line methods also make it easier to start making cars at new plants, including those abroad. But there are no plans so far to start making the Fit in the U.S., Arai said.
Before such efforts, which began several years ago, it required more than seven months to launch a new product at Saitama. Today, it was able to start Fit production in just three months.
That underlines ongoing efforts at Japanese automakers to cut costs and stay nimble as this nation's top industry gets hammered by the global downturn, especially the slump in the critical North American market.
During a tour of the plant, Honda demonstrated how the same line was able to produce different models smoothly.
It also showed how robotics parts on big swinging arms got changed automatically in a matter of minutes, so that the same line could switch from putting together a Freed hatchback to an Odyssey.
Other automakers, including Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., boast flexible production methods and are shifting to smaller models and hybrids.
Honda, with its strength in small models, stayed in the black for the fiscal year ended March 31, and has fared relatively better than Toyota, which sank to its worst yearly loss.
Still, before the financial crisis, the Saitama plant used to have two worker shifts for each of its two assembly lines, keeping the plant running from early in the morning until near midnight.
Now, it is down to one daytime shift.
The plant has enough workers for two shifts, but global demand would have to pick up significantly, boosting needs per line by about 350 vehicles a day to revert to two shifts, Arai said.
"I wish I knew when this could happen," he said. "We have no plans now to return to two shifts."

Source;
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jZjw78EB8npqzwd2v6evapt_gW3g

Engine plant expansion helping Honda make more products in U.S.

The Honda plant in Anna is the largest Honda auto engine plant in the world, according to the company. The plant recently spent $138 million to expand its production capabilities, and it will now supply steel components for four-cylinder motors made at all of Honda’s North American plants. Those parts used to come primarily from Japan.
Business First of Columbus - by Dan Eaton

Honda spent $138 million to expand its Anna automobile engine plant, but the Shelby County operation won’t be making more engines.

The expansion, which took two years to complete, increases the plant’s steel parts production abilities and makes the 23-year-old plant the North American hub of Honda of America Manufacturing Inc.’s engine operations.

“This has been a major project,” said Honda spokesman Ron Lietzke. “It’s almost the same cost of the new engine plant in Canada.”

The work at Anna has received less public attention than Honda’s other recent North American projects, including the $550 million Greensburg auto plant that is set to open this month in Indiana and the $154 million Alliston engine plant in Ontario. But Anna project leader Jim Hranica said it is equally central to the company’s operations.

Cranking it up

Completion of the expansion is part of a worldwide production reshuffle for the auto maker.

Most manufacturing of four-cylinder motors for Honda’s auto plant in Ontario is moving to an engine plant that opened next door Sept. 15. The Anna plant will take up engine production for Honda’s Greensburg assembly operation and it will continue to make V-6 engines for the Alliston plant.

“We’ve been gearing up to do more V-6 production, but now, with the opening of Greensburg, that is swinging back to four-cylinders,” Hranica said.

The Anna plant, which opened in 1985 to build motorcycle engines, employs 2,750 workers and produces 1.2 million engines a year. The expansion added 100 jobs.

The biggest change is in the manufacture of steel component parts for the four-cylinder motors, which the engine plant will be doing for all of Honda’s North American auto plants. Those parts were mostly imported from Japan.

The Anna plant is increasing and in some cases starting production on cylinder sleeves, crankshafts, camshafts and connecting rods.

“What’s going to end up happening is where we were purchasing parts before, we’ll be able to produce them cheaper here and that’s even without shipping costs,” Hranica said.

For the rest of the article, follow the link;
http://columbus.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2008/10/06/story13.html?b=1223265600%5E1710780