Building know-how

With Nissan continuing to shift its manufacturing base overseas, factories in Japan still play a role in spreading production know-how and training workers in other countries. The marque has opened a new plant in Japan, which it refers to as its “global mother plant”. It’s tasked with finding ways to make production lines more efficient and sharing knowledge with overseas factories. Nissan made about 80 per cent of its vehicles in Japan in the early 1090s. Last year, that had dropped to around 20 per cent. “The global role of Japanese plants used to be to function as the production base, but they have now become a base to develop manufacturing technologies and train people, says Fumiaki Matsumoto, vice-president of Nissan. The manufacturing process is first tested and tweaked at the “global mother plant” before being introduced overseas. Nissan says about 1,500 workers have attended training sessions at the plant to date. Workers from abroad are taken to the plant for training in technical skills, such as painting and parts assembly, and management.