In the same week that a tornado severely damaged General Motors’ Oklahoma City SUV plant, storms hit industry suppliers in two parts of Tennessee, Automotive News said.
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According to the weekly trade newspaper’s report, one tornado lifted the roof off a 230,00-square-foot Johnson Controls seating component plant in Lexington, and then dropped it onto the plant’s press room. The early-morning damage closed the plant for about 36 hours. But a company spokesman told Automotive News that none of its customers experienced a supply interruption.
Meanwhile, in nearby Jackson, Toyota and Honda supplier UGN also experienced slight roof damage and power loss for two days. Jackson experienced considerable damage to its downtown area. UGN, a producer of sound insulation and trim parts, switched over to generator power immediately after the storm and was able to continue shipments without interruption, Automotive News said.
The paper said damage to a Yazaki North America sequencing centre outside Nashvillethreatened to halt production at its customer, Nissan North America in Smyrna. According to Automotive News, the storm destroyed the southeast corner of its building, along with about 10% of its production stock and also brought down the operation’s computer-based production and delivery system, which would have derailed Nissan’s production of Altimas, Maximas, Xterras and Frontiers.
After two days of performing the work manually, wire harness supplier Yazaki re-established the computer system in a vacant building next door, leaving Nissan production uninterrupted, Automotive News added.
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By GlobalDataThe paper said tornadoes also swept through central Alabama during the week, including a close pass with Honda ‘s minivan plant in Lincoln. Work there halted only temporarily on Wednesday as the company evacuated employees into tornado shelters but there was no damage to the plant, Automotive News said.
