Nissan expects its Barcelona factory to be vying with its UK sister plant as Europe’s most productive car assembly facility by the end of next year.
The Sunderland factory, in the north east of England, has been number one for the past eight years and Nissan’s European production chief Colin Dodge said the Barcelona plant was catching up fast.
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Dodge, senior vice president, manufacturing, purchasing, supply chain management and recycling, for Nissan Europe, said: “We put a four-year plan in place in 2003 aimed at getting Barcelona into Nissan’s top four plants worldwide, and we are getting there.”
The plan, called TOP07, is geared towards reducing cost per vehicle and improving quality by overhauling production methods.
Dodge said: “We have introduced Nissan’s five basic behaviours: benchmarking, education to improve skills, stopping the line so that we don’t ship defect to the next process, delivering quality on time and rapid response to quality concerns.”
Production has already increased from 70,000 vehicles a year to 200,000 last year and Dodge added that the plant’s performance over the past four months had been its best ever.
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By GlobalData“It is not easy to change a mindset. The Spanish factory has been around for a long time. With Sunderland we started with a greenfield site and with a whole new workforce from top to bottom working towards a common goal.
“At Barcelona we have been changing attitudes and processes. I fully expect the plant to be challenging Sunderland and Nissan’s other top global plants by the end of next year.”
As eager as he is to make improvements in Spain, Dodge is just as keen to see that Sunderland remains at number one. “We have not remained Europe’s most productive plant by standing still. For the past 20 years we have been studying how to be world class and we will continue to do so.
“We certainly don’t want to wake up one morning to find someone has overtaken us at Sunderland and to stay on top we have to keep watching what is happening in Eastern Europe.
“Toyota is there, Hyundai and Kia are moving in; we will study what they are doing, benchmark it and then use the results to keep improving.”
Is he concerned about the competitiveness of building cars in Britain in the light of recent closures and cutbacks in the country announced by PSA Peugeot Citroen and General Motors?
“Ever since I joined the industry I have worried about it future,” he joked. “But while the UK is where we have seen absolute plant closures there are many factories around Europe which have been downsized and are running at 50 percent utilisation that means costs are high and morale is miserable. My job is to make sure Sunderland stays competitive.
“We have to compete against Nissan plants worldwide and we have already been successful in getting the Note business this year and we have now won the P32L (based on the qashqai concept) which goes into production from December.
Dodge revealed that Sunderland would be exporting 24,000 P32L models a year to Japan where the vehicle is expected to be very popular.
“But we can’t get too excited because a model life-cycle only lasts five year so we already have to be looking at winning more business for the future.”
Dodge added that another point in Sunderland’s favour was the fact that issues over the sterling/euro exchange rate had now gone away.
“We are exchange rate neutral in that our buying and selling in sterling is the same as it is in euros. We can manage any currency fluctuations by adjusting this at any time.”
Chris Wright
