Oldest Honda plant shifts to meeting green demand

SAYAMA, Japan — Honda has adjusted production as global demand shifts to small and greener models, turning its oldest Japanese plant into an assembly line for the Fit subcompact for the U.S. market.
But the Saitama plant, which employs 5,500 people, is also showing signs of hard times - running just a single shift instead of the previous two shifts, halving overall plant production to 1,100 vehicles a day.
The Honda Motor Co. factory, shown to reporters Wednesday, used to mostly make bigger models like the Odyssey minivan and Accord sedan.
The plant, which opened in 1964 in this Tokyo suburb, has successfully responded to shifting consumer tastes, as the recent rise in gas prices and concerns about global warming make smaller models like the Fit more in demand, according to Honda.
It began mass-producing the Fit for U.S. export in April, transferring some of that production from another Japanese plant, in Suzuka, central Japan, which is too busy these days churning out the hit Insight hybrid.
Tomonori Arai, a general manager, said Honda was able to efficiently move production because it has standardized robotics parts and other assembly procedures.
The efforts to unify assembly line methods also make it easier to start making cars at new plants, including those abroad. But there are no plans so far to start making the Fit in the U.S., Arai said.
Before such efforts, which began several years ago, it required more than seven months to launch a new product at Saitama. Today, it was able to start Fit production in just three months.
That underlines ongoing efforts at Japanese automakers to cut costs and stay nimble as this nation's top industry gets hammered by the global downturn, especially the slump in the critical North American market.
During a tour of the plant, Honda demonstrated how the same line was able to produce different models smoothly.
It also showed how robotics parts on big swinging arms got changed automatically in a matter of minutes, so that the same line could switch from putting together a Freed hatchback to an Odyssey.
Other automakers, including Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., boast flexible production methods and are shifting to smaller models and hybrids.
Honda, with its strength in small models, stayed in the black for the fiscal year ended March 31, and has fared relatively better than Toyota, which sank to its worst yearly loss.
Still, before the financial crisis, the Saitama plant used to have two worker shifts for each of its two assembly lines, keeping the plant running from early in the morning until near midnight.
Now, it is down to one daytime shift.
The plant has enough workers for two shifts, but global demand would have to pick up significantly, boosting needs per line by about 350 vehicles a day to revert to two shifts, Arai said.
"I wish I knew when this could happen," he said. "We have no plans now to return to two shifts."

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