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The Springfield News-Sun provides in-depth coverage of large employers like Honda, and their affect on workers in Clark and Champaign counties. Recent stories include Honda’s efforts to boost workforce development, as well as how the company was impacted by a recent labor dispute on the West Coast.
By the numbers:
14 million — Vehicles Honda has produced in Ohio
2,350 — Number of employees at East Liberty plant
240,000 — Number of vehicles East Liberty can produce annually
1982 — The year Honda started production in Ohio
Honda’s East Liberty plant produced its 5 millionth vehicle this week as the company also plans to shift its production lineup at two facilities that employ thousands in Ohio.
The milestone car — a 2016 Acura RDX — rolled off the assembly line on Wednesday in East Liberty, a plant that employs about 2,350 workers. Honda also began production there of the 2016 Acura RDX sport-utility vehicle Wednesday, and both events are important for the company, said Tim May, plant manager at East Liberty in a statement.
Honda employs more than 13,000 Ohioans, including more than 1,400 residents from Clark and Champaign counties. It has produced more than 14 million vehicles in the state since it began production in Marysville in 1982.
In a separate announcement, the company also said this week it will discontinue production of the Honda Crosstour in East Liberty for the 2016 model year, and will transfer production of the Hybrid Accord from Marysville to a facility in Japan.
The changes won’t affect staffing at either plant, said Chris Abbruzzese, a spokesman for Honda.
“What they’re really doing is adjusting production to fit demand,” said Stephanie Brinley, an analyst for IHS Automotive. “The Crosstour sales have been a little less than what they wanted and letting that vehicle go is simply because it’s not doing as well as they wanted.”
The Hybrid Accord also makes up a small portion of the company’s sales, so moving production from two locations to a single facility in Japan makes more sense for Honda, she said.
“This is not a matter of reducing output from that plant,” Brinley said. “They’re changing the content of the vehicles they build but they’re not reducing content at all.”
Moving production of the Hybrid Accord to Japan will allow workers in Marysville to focus on other more popular models, Abbruzzese said, including the Accord sedan and the Acura TLX and ILX sedans.
“It’s a fairly standard adjustment automakers have to do as they take a look at the market and figure out what products are working and what products are not,” Brinley said.
The East Liberty Plant was recently renovated to improve its assembly operations, including replacing its main and sub-assembly lines. The improvements will allow it to have more flexibility when manufacturing vehicles, May said.
The company’s Marysville plant also hit a milestone least year, when the 10 millionth U.S. built Honda Accord rolled off the assembly line.
Overall Honda sales have continued to grow, although at a slower pace than the auto industry as a whole, Brinley said. Honda sales have been about 2.6 percent higher compared to the first quarter of last year, but the industry as a whole is up more than 5 percent, she said.
Unlike several other major automakers, Honda isn’t involved in fleet business, which includes selling vehicles to rental car companies and government agencies. That could account for some of the automaker’s slower growth, Brinley said.
The auto industry as a whole is expected to increase sales this year, she said, but at a slower pace than last year.
“We expect the the market will reach about 16.9 million units this year, which is about a 2.5 percent increase compared to last year,” Brinley said. “We’ve got growth in 2015 but it’s a smaller pace than it had been in the last couple years where we were growing more like 5 or 6 percent.”
That will make competition more fierce throughout the industry, she said.
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