Mazda to Invest Nearly 14 Billion Yen in New Digital Technology for Future Product Development

Tokyo, Japan, Mar. 24, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - Mazda Motor Corporation
announced today that, beginning in April 2004, it would
commence the second stage of Mazda Digital Innovation (MDI). "MDI-II," ,
this stage will further boost the engineering efficiency of Mazda's
product development system, while creating an environment that allows
engineers engaged in new product development to maximize their
creativity and further strengthen their capabilities.

With MDI-II, Mazda will expand the engineering areas aided by digital
technology in an effort to reduce the need to build and test costly
prototype models. In order to support this initiative, Mazda will invest
13.9 billion yen (US$126 million) during the next four years. This
investment will be used to advance Mazda's virtual-testing capabilities,
to purchase new super computers and provide for the development of
associated software.

Launched in 1996, MDI-I brought a dramatic improvement to the
engineering efficiency of the Mazda product development system—the
development period of new Mazda products, which in some cases were as
long as 27 months before the introduction of MDI, was cut to between 12
and 18 months. This improvement was realized by introducing concurrent
engineering of new products with common digital data that is shared
throughout the process, from design and technical engineering, to
testing and production preparation. For some new products to be launched
in FY2004, Mazda aims to complete the engineering process in 12 months.

MDI-II is part of Mazda's ongoing work to develop competitive, exciting
products for global consumers in line with Mazda's brand strategy and
enhance the company's long-term capabilities in the areas of both
product development and manufacturing. 

By utilizing advanced digital technology throughout the development
process, Mazda will: 
1) Further enhance the quality and speed of its product development
process, while aiming to further improve efficiency. 
2) Maximize engineers' capability and creativity, and establish a system
that verifies on a computer the functional capability, the quality and
the production process of a new product before the design drawings are
finalized. 


Critical goals of MDI-II - Establish a system that allows all engineers
in the product development system to share the latest
engineering/manufacturing information and accelerate collaboration and
concurrent engineering across divisions. 
- Introduce state-of-the-art parallel computation that will dramatically
shorten Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) analysis time. 
- Introduce a "digital factory" for simulation of production preparation
for all products. 
- Nearly double the amount of "virtual testing" performed during the
development process, improving the ability to forecast collision
performance, NVH levels, etc. 
- Introduce a "virtual reality system" to the design engineering process
to present fresh ideas freely and quickly that can be seen on the
computer and further studied. 
- Expand the use of testing equipment that accelerates concurrent
engineering efforts—developing an engine and transmission at the same
time, for example. 
- Establish an "automatic designing system" that promptly designs and
tests new ideas. 
- Create a virtual engineering environment that conducts a significant
amount of wide-ranging and often difficult product verification. 
- Further expand and maximize the use of testing equipment introduced
during the first stage of MDI and more fully utilize the virtual
engineering system that has been supported by Mazda-developed software.


About Mazda Motor Corporation

Mazda Motor Corporation was established in 1920 and is one
of Japan's leading automobile manufacturers. With its headquarters in
Hiroshima, Mazda has two plants in Japan and manufacturing and assembly
operations in sixteen other countries. Mazda cars and trucks are sold in
more than one hundred and thirty countries. Ford Motor and Mazda agreed
to collaborate in 1979, Ford Motor Company started investing in Mazda
and increased its shareholding to 33.39% as of March 31, 1999. For
further information, please visit the Mazda Motor Corporation home page
at: CLICKHERE 


.