Toyota announced on Thursday (18 December) it is planning another expansion of its southeast Michigan R&D campuses.
This is the third time in just over a year the automaker has announced plans to increase employment and investment in Michigan. Today’s announcement is for a spend of US$126m to expand powertrain operations at the Ann Arbor campus and the consolidation of vehicle development operations at a new facility on the York Township campus.
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Both vehicle development and powertrain functions will become centralised in Michigan, increasing their scope, responsibility and decision making ability while providing improved communication and access to the company’s direct procurement division, Toyota said in a statement. Approximately 85 jobs will relocate to Michigan from California by the end of 2016 as part of the move.
In late 2013, Toyota announced a $28m expansion of its Ann Arbor operations and earlier this year announced the addition of 250 direct procurement and supplier engineering development positions currently based in Erlanger, Kentucky.
Ed Mantey, senior vice president at the Toyota Technical Center, said: “Centralising our vehicle development and powertrain functions here in Michigan is beneficial for our decision-making process and allows us to better respond to changes in the marketplace while improving the speed at which we can offer technology advances to customers.”
In April 2014, Toyota announced that it would establish new headquarters in Plano (North Dallas), Texas for its North American operations as part of a series of moves designed to better serve customers and position the company for sustainable, long-term growth. This strategy includes expanding the technical centre facilities in southeast Michigan to accommodate increased investment in its engineering and product development capabilities; and opening a production engineering facility at the automaker’s largest US manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. The new facilities are expected to be completed by 2017.
