Toyota Re-Starts Making Parts, No Cars
On Thursday, Toyota will restart seven parts plants in central Japan to supply replacement parts for the domestic market, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Production of parts for overseas markets will start Monday.
Previously, Toyota had announced it would close “all plants in Japan (including subsidiary vehicle manufacturers) from March 14 through March 16.” Reuters now says Toyota will keep its 12 Japanese assembly plants closed until March 22. Other makers had closed for the week.
Since Monday, Toyota has lost production of 40,000 vehicles. Industry-wide, several hundred thousand vehicles will go unmade this week alone.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Honda should do well these next couple of months with having a much better mix of build where you sell than its Japanese competitors. I'm curious to see if it equates to sales. Honda has some 25k US employees at factories and offices in the US versus Toyota at 28k - though it sells significantly more cars than Honda (meaning Toyota relies on imports much more than Honda - i.e. Honda has a much higher per capita investment in building in the US).
I am more interested to know with so many cars suffering various degree of damage, are any of them salvageable? "On Thursday, Toyota will restart seven parts plants in central Japan to supply replacement parts for the domestic market." Is Toyota smelling a big market for replacement parts now?
Sure, smelting plants in China are ready.