{"id":49981,"date":"2012-05-16T12:07:23","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T16:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=49981"},"modified":"2012-05-16T12:07:23","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T16:07:23","slug":"new-nissan-altima-is-an-all-american-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2012\/05\/new-nissan-altima-is-an-all-american-car\/","title":{"rendered":"New Nissan Altima is an \u201cAll-American\u201d Car"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nissan reveals the redesigned Altima sedan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is an \u201cAmerican\u201d car? That\u2019s become increasingly difficult to define in an era when most major international automakers operate at least one U.S. assembly plant \u2013 while cars bearing a Detroit nameplate might come from a plant in Korea.<\/p>\n

With much of the design and engineering work done in the U.S. \u2013 and 98% of its content supplied by North American suppliers, Nissan insists the 2013 Altima is about as American as you can get.<\/p>\n

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Stay in the Know!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been moving in this direction for some time,\u201d said Nissan Americas Vice Chairman Bill Krueger following the \u201cJob One\u201d rollout of the first saleable Altima.<\/p>\n

Nissan, he noted, has been steadily increasing the number of products it builds in the U.S. and Mexico, in large part driven by the strong yen.\u00a0 And \u201cWe\u2019ve been localizing (the parts used in those vehicles) at a faster rate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nissan officials could not break down the 98% figure, however, to say specifically what percentage of parts specifically came from the U.S. as opposed to suppliers in Canada or Mexico.\u00a0 But Krueger noted that the automaker is trying to get as many suppliers as possible to base operations in the region surrounding Nissan\u2019s assembly plants in Smyrna, Tennessee and Canton, Mississippi.<\/p>\n

That makes it easier to run a Just-in-Time operations, where there is minimal inventory at the plants.\u00a0 It also offers the opportunity to adopt a Just-in-Sequence operation where parts roll off the supplier\u2019s truck in the exact sequence they are needed on the assembly line.\u00a0 That minimizes the risk of error when, for example, you are using a variety of different colored parts and components.<\/p>\n

Krueger said the Japanese automaker has accelerated efforts to purchase more material in the Americas as the yen has stabilized at around 80 to the U.S. dollar. At that rate it makes little sense to ship parts from Japan.<\/p>\n

The deadly tsunami that struck Japan last March only served to accelerate the process, Krueger said, by disrupting traditional supply lines.<\/p>\n

Nissan has gone a step further than most other manufacturers by asking several key suppliers to set up shop right inside the company\u2019s mile-long assembly complex in Smyrna. So, employees from partsmakers such as Calsonic do final work on components such as headliners and front end modules right next to Nissan employees who will fit those parts onto vehicles like the new Altima.<\/p>\n

The outside suppliers, while operating inside the Smyrna factory, maintain their own, separate wage and benefits structure just as if they were working from another building, according to Susan Brennan, the vice president of manufacturing for Nissan Smyrna.<\/p>\n

As part of the effort to localize content, Nissan has gradually increased the size of its purchasing staff \u2013 which is based in Farmington HIlls, Michigan rather than at Nissan headquarters near Nashville — to 75.<\/p>\n

Nissan is rapidly expanding other parts of it North American operations. Most of the design work and a significant part of the engineering for the fifth generation Altima was handled at facilities in Michigan, California and Tennessee.\u00a0 And by summer the new sedan will be produced both in Tennessee and at the Canton plant, where Nissan plans to expand capacity by 20%.<\/p>\n

With the launch of Leaf battery car production in Smyrna late this year Nissan will be producing roughly a dozen different products in the U.S., with more likely to be added.<\/p>\n

The maker is also investing heavily in Mexico where it currently operates two assembly plants and will spend over $1 billion to add another manufacturing complex in Aguas Calientes.<\/p>\n

The launch of Altima production at Smyrna marks the introduction of the first of five new products the maker will be rolling out over the next 15 months \u2013 and will arguably be the most important.\u00a0 Nissan has openly expressed its desire to become number one in the midsize segment with the new model, Krueger telling TheDetroitBureau.com, \u201cNobody wants to be the silver medalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether consumers will be swayed by Nissan\u2019s heavy reliance on U.S. workers and North American-sourced parts remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is an \u201cAmerican\u201d car? That\u2019s become increasingly difficult to define. But Nissan definitely believes the new Altima qualifies — with most design and much of its engineering work done in the U.S., the car scheduled to roll off two U.S. assembly lines and 98% of its parts coming from North American suppliers. TheDetroitBureau.com has more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49981"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=49981"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=49981"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=49981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}