Nissan by East Coast Promotions

COMPANY PROFILE

2014

Nissan SA

www.nissan.co.za

company profile

The fuel for improvement Editorial: Christian Jordan Production: Hal Hutchison

Through continuous improvement and investment, Nissan SA and the automotive industry more widely are ramping up their activities to meet future demand. With increased production capacity and a focus on ‘green car projects’, Nissan SA is a front runner in a very competitive industry.

Kaizen; Japanese for ‘good change’; is a concept that has been applied to business for many years. Although it’s literal translation has no reference to the English words ‘continuous’ or ‘philosophy’, it has become common practice for businesses in Japan, and around the world, the label any industrial or business improvement techniques with the word kaizen. People will often refer to continuous improvement plans as kaizen or ‘taking the Japanese philosophy’ but whatever the translation, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Many theorists suggest that the first time kaizen was used on a mass scale was in the Japanese automotive industry when Toyota began focussing

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on continued improvement in small groups, supervised by a manager who integrates the improvements made by the group into other groups in pursuit of over ‘total quality management’. The kaizen concept was made popular by famous Japanese organisational theorist, Masaaki Imai in his 1986 book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success and today in 2014, we are seeing the concept rolled out on a larger scale than ever. Although in many businesses, kaizen takes a different name, the concept remains the same. South Africa holds strong ties with Japan, just last year the Department of Trade and Industry and Japan’s Mizuho Corporate Bank announced they would work together to promote business co-operation between the two countries. There are many Japanese firms operating in South Africa in

Nissan SA

last year President Zuma said that 200,000 South African’s are employed by more than 100 Japanese firms. And one of the most prominent is Nissan South Africa. Employing over 1900 people, Nissan SA is one of the country’s largest automotive organisations and has impressive facilities that are continuously being upgraded.

ROSSLYN Nissan’s factory in Rosslyn, home to other automotive giants including BMW, is one of the most impressive in Africa. The plant is a leader in South Africa with regards to sound environmental practice in its manufacturing process and has won many awards and recognition both locally and internationally for its environmental efforts.

These include the exclusion of chlorofluorocarbons and other harmful chemicals from all phases of its manufacture, chemical and other waste management; water and power savings efforts; a man-made wetland which is a catchment area for storm water; recycling; and working closely with its numerous suppliers and dealers to ensure sound environmental practice. Nissan SA’s facilities are a CNC machine enthusiasts dream with everything from an autospray facility, to give Nissan vehicles a quality paint finish in line with the best in the world, to a highly automated production line which ensures consistently high levels of quality. Importantly, to meet the growing demand for its vehicles, especially from Africa, Nissan announced in 2012 that it would increase production at the

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company profile this increasingly important African market, as part of the wider Nissan Power 88 plan,” explained Nissan SA managing director, Mike Whitfield. “Nissan South Africa has demonstrated its competence in key deliverables — improvements in quality, cost and productivity — and we are confident in its capability to meet anticipated demand, and increased production is expected to during financial year 2014,” he said. Toshiyuki Shiga said: “Global markets are pivotal to Nissan’s growth strategy and Africa, in particular, is a strategic region.” Production capacity has already increased at the Rosslyn plant to 50,000 from its production capacity of 25,000 in 2008. Whitfield suggested back in 2012 that total investment in the Rosslyn facility would come to R1 billion and would create 800 new jobs directly and around 4000 indirectly, through the supply chain. In 2011, Whitfield said that exports into Africa, Russia, Turkey and other western European countries, and a strong local market would fuel the production ramp up.

FUELLING CHANGE

Rosslyn plant; creating jobs, and allowing the facility to potentially produce 100,000 vehicles each year by 2016. The announcement of the capacity increase came during a visit to the South African operation by the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor Company Limited, Toshiyuki Shiga. With vehicle sales on the continent contributing more than 90,000 units to Nissan’s global 2011 vehicle sales, Africa is a key strategic region. Sales will be driven by a new 1-ton pick-up to be produced at the Rosslyn plant, along with the current NP200, NP 300 Hardbody, the Nissan Livina range and the Renault Sandero under the Renault-Nissan alliance. “The local industry’s APDP (Automotive Production and Development Programme), which encourages individual manufacturers to increase production levels above 50 000 units per annum, is completely in tune with our own ambitions within

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Away from the challenge of increasing production at the Rosslyn plant, Nissan SA has been laying out other hurdles for its tool room and manufacturing people. There is a now a significant drive underway in South Africa, and around the world, to develop the market for electric vehicles. In February 2013, Nissan South Africa and the Department of Environmental Affairs launched a pilot project to test the feasibility of electric vehicles in South African conditions, using the Nissan Leaf, the world’s first mass-produced electric car “The fundamental motivation for embarking on this project is the urgent need for South Africa to transition to a job creating, sustainable, low-carbon and green economy as clearly outlined in the National Development Plan,” said Environmental Affairs Minister, Edna Molewa. “The transition to a low-carbon and sustainable economy can create large numbers of green jobs across many sectors of the economy and indeed can become an engine of development,” she said. But what does this mean for manufacturing? While we are all aware that the drive towards electric cars and lower emissions is, on the whole,

Nissan SA a good thing; are we aware of the effects on the manufacturing industry? For Nissan SA there will be no slowdown, in the short term, of production of cars with traditional combustion engines and there will be an increase in the production of electric vehicles so this means a net increase in production overall – a good thing. But in the long term, if there is a dramatic shift towards manufacturing electric motors to go into cars, the manufacturing process at Rosslyn will have to adapt slightly to cater for the differences between electric and petrol powered engines. And who’s to say electric motors won’t be imported from China, South Korea or Japan where they are already produced to a high spec for low prices? Well, that is the reason for the establishment of the ‘green car project’ and stakeholders; Nissan SA, the Environmental Affairs Department, the Departments of Trade and Industry, Transport, Energy, Science and Technology, Eskom, and the South African Revenue Services; are all working to ensure that production, skills, money and development remain in South Africa. “This electric vehicle industry strategy prepares

for the future transition into design and production of alternative propulsion systems in order to maintain or increase South Africa’s global market share in the automotive sector while still responding to its commitment to decrease its carbon footprint,” Molewa said. One thing that is for sure, as production and automation does increase in the automotive industry, as a whole but especially for Nissan, there will not be a shortage of skilled labour to fill roles that require specific abilities and this is thanks to the commitment from the Tooling Association South Africa who are running very successful training initiatives that help create opportunities for both companies and individuals. It’s because of these training programmes and the growing demand for products from African and other export markets that there is a sense of optimism in automotive tooling right now. And as long as the automotive companies continue to follow kaizen style strategies, the country’s burgeoning industry will have no trouble growing even further in the future with Nissan acting as one of the frontrunners.

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