Nissan Sets Up Global Training Center in Oppama

TOKYO ; Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., announced it has begun a global manufacturing training program at its Oppama Plant in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture to ensure world-class vehicle quality standards.

The program will train overseas employees in vehicle production know-how, including coiled steel stamping, body welding, and painting, as well as logistics, quality assurance and production facility maintenance. By conducting the program on the plant’s premises, overseas employees will be able to establish close communications with local supervisors, while training on actual production lines.

The new program is also expected to play a significant role in deploying the Nissan Production Way (NPW), which is focused on genba kanri or continuous improvement, to Nissan’s manufacturing facilities around the world.

The program will start with five employees from Nissan Mexicana who will undergo training for the next three weeks. Starting from August 2006, about 400 overseas employees are expected to go through the program a year.

The training program is being implemented as Nissan executes a record 70 production launches around the world under its new mid-term business plan, Nissan Value-Up, which began in April. As previously announced, Nissan plans to release 28 all-new models during Value-Up, boosting global sales to 4.2 million units in 2008.

As part of its ongoing commitment to world-class vehicle quality, Nissan earlier this year also announced plans to build a global production engineering center in Zama City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The new global production engineering center, which will start operations in March 2007, will focus on improving the quality of new vehicles through the concentrated trial production and quality analysis of new vehicles in all stages of production, from press shop to trim and chassis.

The Oppama Plant is one of Nissan’s largest domestic plants and produces about 370,000 vehicles a year, mainly compact cars such as the March, Cube and Note.