Word: honda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Alabama has been particularly aggressive. Since the early 1990s, the state has offered German-based Mercedes, Japan's Honda and South Korea's Hyundai a staggering $1 billion in tax incentives, abatements and infrastructure improvements to build plants there. The return on investment has been $7 billion, creating almost 50,000 direct jobs and another 70,000 in sectors like parts suppliers. The population of the town of Vance, where the 4,000-employee Mercedes factory is located, has leapt from 500 to 2,000. Unlike the local sawmill, fertilizer plant or rock quarry, residents feel Mercedes "is going...
...Part of that efficiency is what Edward Miller, a Honda spokesman in Alabama, calls a modern "harmonious flow" - having nearby vendors supply parts, and workers assemble them, as they're needed rather than stockpiling too much inventory or flooding the market with, say, gas-guzzlers no one wants to buy anymore. "Southern communities understand you can't tie organizations down with restrictions," says manufacturing management expert David Miller of the Alabama Productivity Center. "Successful auto companies in the South provide all the positives you'd find in a union shop...
...major concern for the Japanese economy is that currency rates, the dollar-yen in particular, are pummeling Japanese exporters as their products lose competitiveness abroad. Coupled with a general decline in global demand, the weak dollar-yen is dumping ice water on corporate profits at titans like Sony and Honda...
...This bleak outlook could get even worse, at least in the short term, if GM, Ford or Chrysler went bust. That's because of a domino effect that would probably result in the subsequent failures of parts suppliers that also sell to factories operated by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the U.S. Vehicles built on American soil accounted for 63% of Japan's total U.S. sales in 2007, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. A sudden parts shortage could force companies to shut down some of those assembly lines, generating major losses...
...ordinary times, gaining market share was Job One for Japan. But now executives are trying to figure out how to cope under circumstances they have never faced before. Sacred cows are being sacrificed to preserve earnings: Honda announced today that it was pulling out of Formula One racing to focus on its core business. Toyota, which has seen its stock drop more than 50% since the beginning of the year, established an Emergency Profit Improvement Committee chaired by company president Katsuaki Watanabe. Since forming the committee last month, Toyota has planned cuts to production, as well as layoffs...