As BMW pushes ahead with its plans for its new
plant in Mexico, the Daimler AG/Renault-Nissan Alliance launches a
manufacturing joint venture in Aguascalientes in central Mexico to start in
2017.
The state-of-the-art
plant will be located near the Nissan Aguascalientes A2 plant. It will have an
initial annual production capacity of more than 230,000 vehicles and will
create about 3,600 direct jobs by 2020.
Depending on
market development and customer demand, there is potential to add additional
capacity, possibly to make 500,000 a year.
Production of
Infiniti vehicles begins first in 2017, while the first Mercedes-Benz vehicles
will roll off the line in 2018.
Although COMPAS
is deemed to be led by an international management team from Daimler and Nissan,
Nissan has seen to it that its man is leading the company from the front. He
knows, more than most, just how Nissan thinks and works. This is a big step up
for him and a major assignment with total success as the only goal.
So Ryoji
Kurosawa becomes chief executive officer supported by two Daimler men: Uwe
Jarosch is chief financial officer and Glaucio Leite is chief quality officer.
The last two appointments point to the core thrusts of the business: finance
and quality.
The
decision-making process of COMPAS is supported by a Board of Directors made up
of three executives from each company. The board members from Daimler are:
Michael Göbel, head of production compact cars, Mercedes-Benz Cars; Axel
Harries, head of quality management, Mercedes-Benz Cars; and Christian Schulz,
head of controlling, Mercedes-Benz Cars Operations.
The Nissan executives
are: Armando Avila, manufacturing vice president, Nissan Mexico; Carlos Servin,
finance vice president, Nissan North America; and Takehiro Terai, total
customer satisfaction vice president, Nissan North America.
Team building
The first item
on their agenda has been one of team-building to establish the core of the new
business to establish the ethos of the business.
Kurosawa of
course sets the tone by claiming: “COMPAS is an outstanding example of the
global reach of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler cooperation. Together
we are combining the manufacturing expertise of Nissan and Daimler in one
production plant in Mexico for the production of next-generation premium
compact cars.”
“Aguascalientes
was selected as the location for this new plant thanks to the state’s
well-established supplier base and Nissan’s track record in highly efficient
manufacturing in Mexico for more than three decades,” he adds.
Kurosawa has over
30 years’ manufacturing experience at both Nissan and Infiniti. In his last
position as general manager of the Tochigi Plant in Japan, he was in charge of
the production and quality of Infiniti, including the Infiniti Q50 flagship
sedan.
“With COMPAS,
Mercedes-Benz Cars will for the first time have a production location for
compact cars in the NAFTA region and will thus be able to serve its customers
close to the market in a flexible and efficient manner,” notes Jarosch.
Jarosch, as a
time server, has put in over 40 years of his life at Daimler, so he too knows
company thinking inside out. He has completed various and largely international
assignments in finance and controlling. In his last position as CFO of the
Mercedes-Benz passenger cars business in India, he had a responsible role in
the significant expansion of the local production and the sales network in the
country.
“By
incorporating the best from both companies in terms of manufacturing and
quality processes, we will produce top-quality products, maximize resources,
and optimize costs at the same time. We are also making sure that both brands’
quality requirements and identities are safeguarded,” adds Leite.
With 24 years
at Daimler, Leite knows commercial vehicles and passenger car production. He
has occupied various functions in production and planning at Mercedes-Benz
commercial vehicles as well as passenger cars in Brazil and Germany. In his
last position, after several project assignments at the passenger car plants in
the USA and China, he oversaw preparations for the final assembly of the
next-generation E-Class at the Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen plant in Germany.
As announced in
June 2014, Daimler and Infiniti will also cooperate in the development of the
next-generation premium compact vehicles for the brands Mercedes-Benz and
Infiniti. The two partners obviously are closely collaborating at every stage
of the product creation process.
They claim brand
identity will be safeguarded as the Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti vehicles will
differ from each other in terms of product design, driving characteristics, and
specifications, but no doubt there will be opportunities for hidden parts
sharing to benefit from economies of scale; the more so as Daimler and Nissan will
also produce the next-generation premium compact cars at other production
locations around the world, including Europe and China.
German and
Japanese machinery vendors too will be looking for a slice of the action.
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