Mazda Official Blasts U.S.-Made Auto Parts
The head of Mazda Motor Corp.’s U.S. subsidiary harshly criticized its American parts suppliers on Tuesday, saying U.S.-made parts have three to five times more defects than their Japanese counterparts.
Osamu Nobuto, president of Mazda Motor Manufacturing USA Corp., told an auto industry conference here that about half the car parts Mazda uses to assemble cars at its Flat Rock, Mich., plant are American. He said he would like to raise that to 70% but is concerned about the quality.
“To the Japanese, defective parts are a kind of a shame and a sin. Americans believe it is inevitable to have defects--they take the attitude that if anything is wrong, we will replace it,” he said at the International Automotive Industry Conference at the University of Michigan.
50 U.S. Suppliers
Nobuto said U.S. suppliers are satisfied if 90% of their parts are satisfactory and that they do not strive to improve that level. “Yet we cannot expect our customers to be satisfied with a vehicle that is only 90% defect-free,” Nobuto said.
He said he was shocked when some U.S. parts suppliers told him that if the company insisted on higher quality, rather than receiving replacements for defective parts, the suppliers would no longer do business with Mazda.
Mazda currently buys parts from about 50 American suppliers, and does business with 400 companies in Japan. Like many Japanese firms, it is under pressure to obtain more of its supplies domestically to reduce costs. The yen’s rise against the dollar has made Japanese parts considerably more expensive.
Nobuto said he found that Japanese suppliers are more prompt than their U.S. counterparts, who tend to be more casual about delivery dates.
He said he believes that managers at U.S. parts suppliers often make promises to car makers that middle managers cannot keep or even understand.
“I believe you have a saying, ‘The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing,’ and this is often what we find,” Nobuto said.
Mazda last fall began building cars for itself and for Ford Motor Co. at its Flat Rock plant. Last week. it became the first Japanese-owned plant in the United States to be unionized when its United Auto Workers members ratified a three-year contract.
“You must realize we are not merely guests in your land,” Nobuto said. “We are also American companies, employing American workers, making a contribution to the American economy and very much affected by that economy as well.”
