As Nissan's senior vice president for manufacturing, supply chain management and purchasing, John Martin has his hands full overseeing the marque's entire manufacturing presence in North America, including the Canton, Miss., facility that will build the 2015 Murano. He took on this responsibility in January 2014, after several prosperous years with Nissan in the United Kingdom and Japan.
We sat down with Martin to discuss his vision for producing upward of 500,000 vehicles in Mississippi, as well as the question on everyone's mind: Is there a future for the Murano CrossCabriolet?
How many jobs will be specifically created to produce the Murano?
We're going to create a total of 1400 jobs, of which 400 are in suppliers on site. It's a big development for us, trying to get suppliers closer to this city.
You're going to have a front-wheel-drive car with Mercedes-Benz. How will the cooperation work in supply chain management?
Right now, we've got 12 projects with Daimler globally. Thats the important point: There is no Daimler project here in Canton. If you look at the projects that we've done in the Americas, we've just started shipping to the Mercedes-Benz Tuscaloosa plant a four-cylinder turbocharged gasoline engine. We ship it Tuscaloosa and to our Tochigi, Japan, factory that makes our Infiniti range of cars. That engine goes into a wide variety of vehicles that we ship globally.
Is the cooperation just with Nissan? What about Renault?
Most of Renault's manufacturing footprint is in South America, eastern Europe, north Africa, Europe-many facilities in France and Spain-and in Korea, with Renault-Samsung Motors, wholly owned by Renault. [Renault] has its own range of four-cylinder engines used in our European factories for Nissan, and also Renault is dominant in the area of diesel. None of these engines are going to Renault. You're talking about a four-cylinder turbocharged engine-it wouldn't make economic sense to ship them from the U.S. to a European factory.
But shipping a Decherd, Tenn.-built engine to Tochigi makes economic sense?
Oh, yeah. Not to Europe. We wouldn't have the volume for it, When you consider that we already have supply there from our own powertrain plants in the U.K., Spain, and France.
What is common purchasing like with Daimler/Mercedes-Benz?
We haven't currently any common purchasing with Mercedes-Benz. They purchase their parts and supply to us, and we purchase our parts and where necessary supply to them. There's no common purchasing, because we are not an alliance. Common purchasing would be anti-competitive.
Why build the Altima in two different U.S. plants?
We don't have the capacity to build it in one single plant! Smyrna is the primary factory, on three shifts building Altima, and the overflow volume comes to two shifts at Canton. We have a major facelift, which is actually an all-new Altima, and that's launching in FY15. It'll be launched in both factories. We need it for the volume.
You could build 480,000 cars here now. How many will you build this year?
306,000.
And you could build 507,000 by 2017—
—Kaizen: that's how I'll get it to 507,000. It's a 7 percent increase. I can do that, over time.
Will any Maxima production be overflow to Canton?
Definitely not. Maxima will be 100 percent built in Smyrna.
And this is the only factory where Murano will be produced globally to 100 export markets?
Yes. If the greedy American dealers get their way, they won't allow any one of them to get a car. Right now, they've put their name for all 94,000 [of a full production year's run].
Nissan has a pretty diverse range of products. Why not specialize?
Right now, the problem is that we make a profit on all of them. That's really the issue. When you consider that some of our products have been evolving over time-look at Titan, [which is] 11 years old. As we see the crossover market flesh out, that's going to be really interesting. We see more nameplates coming into play.
Will you build any of them here?
Yes.
Is that included in the 2017 production figure of 507,000?
No. That's beyond that. We're getting ready to see if this progression from three-box sedan continues to move toward crossovers, which we've seen in Europe.
What kind of future does Quest have?
Quest is [part of] a shrinking segment, as more of the demographics that buy that vehicle move toward crossovers. We've had tremendous take-up on the Rogue, which you can buy with three rows. The last row is very suitable for small kids. Going away from the slab-sided style of the people carrier, and a bit of a higher driving position: that's what's really taking off. We do not see any major growth in the MPV market. But we will maintain a presence in it.
Kia has the Sedona, Toyota has the Sienna, Honda has the Odyssey...
...and we're still there with the Quest, which is built in Japan. It's very high-quality, gets great customer satisfaction ratings, and you have to remember that there are a lot of markets that take that car outside of the U.S. We sell a load of them in southeast Asia. It makes sense to have a critical mass built in Japan [for] burgeoning MPV markets.
What do you think of the Murano CrossCabriolet?
There is no plan for the Murano CrossCabriolet. I can probably go out on a limb and say there will never be a plan.
What's happening to the jobs in Japan that this new Murano will displace?
We've made a commitment to Japan that we would maintain 1 million units of production, and we've done that. Our factories are safe, secure, and operating. We've launched the Rogue in Japan in the plant that used to build the Murano. So it's still building the [current] Murano for some markets, as not all markets will get the new Murano from the start. [The factory] is going to built it for about two years to start, at much-reduced volume. Rogue stepped in and really ramped up the volume. That's our busiest factory in Japan right now.
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