IMO, they invested quite a bit in this plant and the additional 830 million, committed in 2020, were for "cutting edge" technologies and better training. As long as they are paying a close attention to they're QA/QC processes I think it will be ok. and tbh I expect that for the top 2 manufacturers known for they're vehicle reliability (at least couple years now) in the auto industry.
Are they making the CX-5 there also?
I doubt it would make much difference if they were sharing the plant with Yugo or Lexus. There's no shared design or manufacturing in the two vehicles, different management and processes.Very true. It's a good sign that the plant is shared with Toyota, which has been the auto industry's benchmark of reliability and build quality (Lexus) for many years. I'd be a lot more concerned if the plant was shared with Nissan or Lincoln, for example.
I find that difficult to believe. Toyota has a financial stake in Mazda. The structure and layout of the buildings alone have implications for assembly, materials management, quality control, and so forth.I doubt it would make much difference if they were sharing the plant with Yugo or Lexus. There's no shared design or manufacturing in the two vehicles, different management and processes.
The sharing appears to be for economies of scale, and a novel flexible assembly floor or so I've read. As for the latter, if one model is selling more than the other that flexible floor might make it easier to shift production from one to the other.
The CX-50 is built on the same platform as the CX-30. The CX-50 drive trains are Mazda's. A Mazda North America representative stated explicitly parts will not be shared between CX-50 and Corolla Cross.I find that difficult to believe. Toyota has a financial stake in Mazda. The structure and layout of the buildings alone have implications for assembly, materials management, quality control, and so forth.
I think they are sharing more than an address.
Thanks for the link, its exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in my post. Particularly manufacturing and processes:Here's an article about the flexible assembly system I alluded to earlier. It is a Mazda design which might be one reason why the plant is named Mazda Toyota Alabama, not the other way around, as well as the extent of the "sharing" currently taking place--an assembly system, not auto design or shared parts currently manifest. Not very elegantly written, but you get the gist:
QA procedures and software testing processes are the kinds of things that are model or shared component specific. As far as I can tell the workers are not shared / cross trained. So it would seem that kind of stuff comes later when they actually share stuff beyond the assembly floor design and processes.I would think that they would be sharing basic operation guidelines and processes at minimum. Things like QA procedures and standards, software testing processes, etc. Things that could streamline and optimize production on both lines.
I owned a 2004 Sienna LE for 10 years and 150,000 miles which didn't have anything break and was still running strong when I traded it for a 2014 Sienna LE, now going on 8 years with 100,000 miles, also trouble free. Toyota had chronic problems with the sliding doors over those periods but I never had a malfunction. Got the wiring harness recall installed on the 2014 just because.Our Toyota Sienna was made in the USA as was our Honda Odyssey. Both unreliable. Nothing major but tons of little things such as the sliding door failing, the cruise control camera cracking and requiring replacement, A/C issues, etc. A lot of these things costed $1000-$2500 to fix and drove me nuts. None of those cars got over 120K miles either.