BANGKOK, THAILAND (June 30, 2010) - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today announced Nissan Motor (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (NMT) celebrated the start of the all-new Nissan March at its vehicle assembly plant, 20 km east of Bangkok, attended by Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan, Deputy Prime Minister Triong Suwanakiri and Thai government officials.
To maintain high quality and cost competitiveness for the new March, Nissan has been developing a new manufacturing system globally. In Thailand, the first place to produce the Nissan March, 90,000 units are planned to be produced in FY2010, and they will be exported to the Asian region excluding China and Indonesia, and to Oceania while supplying the fast-growing Thai market.
"The new March will satisfy customers including those in Japan, where the requirements for product quality are incomparably high", said Toru Hasegawa, President of NMT. "It is a great pleasure to celebrate the export of the new March to Japan. Today is a memorable one for NMT, marking a big step towards global manufacturing as an export hub for Nissan."
The new model will also be produced in the Chennai Plant in India, from which vehicles will be exported to more than 100 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In addition, production will also start in Mexico and China. The Nissan March/Micra will be sold in more than 160 countries and regions. In 2013, new compact cars based on the same platform as the new March will be sold globally with a plan to sell more than one million units.
In the global production sites for the new March global compact car, the Nissan Production Way (NPW), a Nissan production method to ensure highest quality standard, has adopted. With NPW, both high quality and attractive pricing have been achieved. Production engineers from each country are sent to the Global Production Engineering Center (GPEC) in Japan and are given training on quality improvement based on NPW. Nearly 90% of all the parts used are localized. A support team from Japan visits each local supplier, checks the quality level, and in close cooperation with them, builds an effective supplier network. In addition, production engineers as well as foremen and supervisors from Japan including the Oppama plant are dispatched to each production site in order to improve the local manufacturing process with the local staff to ensure "Nissan Quality."
By building a comprehensive quality control system from parts to vehicle assembly and optimizing a local production system, NMT achieves cost competitiveness as well as a level that meets "Nissan Quality." Additionally, the "NENIRI" line, with which the rigorous quality check is carried out after the usual final examination procedure, has been adopted in NMT's vehicle assembly plant. In the Oppama plant, additional quality check processes have been installed for the new March to be sold in Japan from this July in order to respond to the higher quality level required in the Japanese market.
In Thailand where the all-new March was first launched in March with annual sales target of 20,000 units, more than 16,000 orders have already been received. NMT is considering to expand production capacity to respond to further market growth and increase in export destinations.
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