| Subscribe to the From the Editor RSS feed | About 40% of what Airbus puts in an airplane comes from the United States, said Allan McArtor, chairman of Airbus Americas (www.airbus.com), who also spoke at the event. “The success of the Airbus product line comes from innovation. We find that in the United States. There's almost a month more of days for a U.S. worker than there is for a European worker.”
Airbus is heavily invested with Wichita State University and an engineering center there, but Mobile, Alabama is the epicenter of its development in the United States. “In choosing Alabama, our logistics required container-ship and airport access,” explained McArtor. “The state of Alabama was very cooperative. We were taken by how motivated the local community was after Katrina and the BP oil spill. We have a global engineering base, but innovation comes closer to the production facility. As long as we stay close to our engineering centers and universities and the manufacturing hubs, we think we'll have a combination of innovation and manufacturing.”
Nissan’s intent is to produce vehicles where they're selling them. “The scale of our products is smaller than an airplane's, but we see weekly shifts in demands based on the price of gasoline,” said a third event speaker, Bill Krueger, senior VP, manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain, Nissan North America (www.nissanusa.com). “It's important that we have available, capable workers who have the basic requirements and the hunger to learn. We're finding that in Tennessee and Mississippi. We've been in Tennessee for more than 30 years. They were very attractive because of their proximity to where our consumers are. The outbound logistics are very favorable. The inbound is favorable because the Detroit suppliers have migrated south.”
Nissan is exporting out of Tennessee to Russia and to China, explained Krueger. “The countries will dictate the regulations to what they'll allow,” he said. “We’re fast, frugal, and flexible. We don't want automation to be so capital-intensive that it relies on scale. There's nothing more flexible and nimble than a human being, when it comes to manufacturing. But automation can relieve some of the arm and leg power and allow automakers to have flexibility with the workforce. We're looking to have applicable automation. The integration of information in the factory — the information transfer — is more prevalent in my mind when we're setting up new plants.”
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