Case Study : Nissan 's Operation Management

Toyota Motor Manufacturing (TMM), USA Inc. is formed by Toyota Motor Corp (TMC) in 1985 by investing $800 million to build a Plant at Kentucky, USA which will starts production in 1988 of around 200,000 units of Camry Sedan car. The purpose of building a plant is to compete in US market in midsize car which is comprise of one third of total US car market. TMM producing the cars on the same philosophy, methodology and technology, which TMC used to produce cars at their best quality and lowest cost in Japan.

Jack Neift Trucking is a small, privately held trucking business that is feeling the impact

This is a case study analysis on Nissan Canada Inc. (NCI) and its plan to move from a “make to stock” to a “make to order” process and the implementation of NCI’s Integrated Customer Ordering Network (ICON). Involved in the implementation of ICON, NCI is faced with several challenges in the conversion of its outdated ordering process to Manugistics, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. (Hunter, 2007)

Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A. (TMM) is deviating from the standard assembly line principle of jidoka in an attempt to avoid expenses incurred from stopping the production line for seat quality defects. This deviation has contributed to the inability to identify the root cause of the problem, which has led to decreased run ratios on the line and an excess of defective automobiles in the overflow lot for multiple days. If this problem isn’t fixed quickly, an increased amount of waste will continue to be incurred and customer value will be threatened.

Nissan is one of the world¶s largest automobiles company. It has got manufacturing locations in 18 nations and services available in around 160 locations. Thus, it would be appropriate to call the company global to a large extent. In year 2007, Nissan¶s Executive Vice President, Tadao Takahashi mentioned its strategy of moving to transnational from multi-domestic. At present Nissan has increased its focus on emerging markets like India and Russia. In March 2010, Renault-Nissan Alliance inaugurated its first plant in Chennai, India. The plant will become operational in May and expected to launch car by mid

Nissan being an MNC it is exposed to several financial market risks which include Forex risks, interest rates and commodity prices. Not all risks can be eliminated through derivative investments. Although it is not possible to eliminate all the risks with the use of derivative products, Nissan does hedge commodity and currency price risks.

After the flooding of Japan in 2011, the recovery team for Nissan went out of their way to make sure that production continued. To insure that production continued, Nissan set some new systems in place for operations management. This would insure that Nissan would be able to maintain the products value by being able to continued delivery to their consumers. They did this in a few procedures listed below put in place by the recovery team:

Renault is French automotive manufacturer founded in 1899 by the Renault brothers in Boulogne Billancourt. The company is now employing about 127,000 people all around the world.

One of the world’s largest automakers, GMC has it’s roots traced back to 1908. Also known as GM, this company is a United States-based automaker with its headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. After the General Motors Company was founded, it soon became known as one of the largest car manufacturers in the world. In 1909, the Grabowsky Rapid Motor Vehicle Company (GMC) joined with GM. The trade name GMC Trucks was first exhibited in 1912 at the New York Auto Show and registered with the U.S. Patent Office eight months later. The

Carlos Ghosn was credited for successful management of Japanese firm Nissan to a profitability which earned him a well known name called "TurnaroundArtist." Even though he was an outsider and lack a clear understanding of the traditional working methods of the Japanese firms, Carlos did a recommendable work which brought the company into sense of urgency in management. According to IBSCDC (2005) when Carlos was the CEO for the Nissan Company, he managed to reduce the firm's debts of about $19 billion to almost zero.

In March of 2011, northeastern Japan was struck by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. The magnitude 9 quake (Oskin, 2015) triggered a devastating tsunami, killing thousands, damaging the country’s infrastructure and paralyzing all private, public, and government entities. One of the businesses disrupted by the disaster was Nissan Motor Company LTD, a multinational auto manufacturer producing automobiles under the brand names of Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun. This paper will discuss how Nissan’s quick-thinking Operations Management (OM) team responded to the crisis with rapid efficiency, helping it to capture a competitive advantage over other Japanese auto makers and succeed in its recovery from this monumental natural disaster.

BMW is currently the 1st most valuable car brand in the world and the 23rd most valuable brand in the world; in 2011 it was the 2nd right behind Toyota. BMW’s brand value increased 10% while Toyota’s brand value decreased by 10%. It currently own “Rolls-Royce Motor Cars” which is a British manufacturer of luxury automobiles and “MINI” which is a British automotive marque which specializes in small cars.

The company understands the risks for working with U.S. auto industry especially during the recession in 2008, so they venture out to produce four new business units to minimize it by looking into investing on early-stage opportunities.

This report is based on the business analysis conducted of the Nissan Motors and the Japanese automotive industry at the time Ghosn was appointed as CEO in 1999. The analysis of the strengths and weaknesses along with the opportunities and threats to the company are evaluated and it is presented using the SWOT framework. SWOT framework is mainly used for the assessment of the Micro environment of any company and hence it is very useful here. Apart from this assessment, how this company how managed its weaknesses in order to compete in the market is also considered in this report based on its importance in the business analysis. Evaluation of the business objective new vision and mission that Ghosn set for company and how these are incorporated in the business profile is also included in this report.

If Nissan is indeed seen to transform into a divisional form in the sense of Mintzberg’s model, diversification of products based on the particular market would be apparent. This is not overtly stated in the case study. However, as Nissan is viewed as a multinational organization which implies, as Porter cited in Segal-Horn (2006a), suggests, faces the associated challenges of major differences between markets of various countries. Consequently, subsidiaries of Nissan would diversify products in other countries in order to ensure optimum global market penetration.