Car Concerns

Harry,

They had quality problems from the get-go, bad enough for a team of Nissan manufacturing engineers from Japan to go there, find out what was wrong and try to fix it, which they largely have done because the quality scores have definitely improved. Some unsubstantiated reports were that workers were wearing loose jewelry that scratched up vehicles on the line. I don't know how true that is, nor the rumor that management had to use picto-graphs to teach some poorly educated workers how to do their jobs.

In reality, I think the problem had much to do with the learning pains of a greenhorn work force building vehicles for the first time; a challenging thing to do, given the complicated nature of today's cars and light trucks. Nissan should have anticipated that, and taken the appropriate steps in the first place, rather than wait for poor quality reports to surface. On the other had, the Nissan plant in your state from the very beginning was cited as one of the most productive auto plants in the country, and those workers were hardly veterans of the auto industry when the Smyrna plant first opened. I think they were just better trained and better supervised, as a rookie staff must be.

Hope this helps.

Steve Finlay
Editor-In-Cheif
Wards Dealer Business