MAZDA DE MEXICO VEHICLE OPERATION

Company: Mazda de Mexico Vehicle Operation

Location: Salamanca, Guanajuato

Start operations: February 2014

Capital: Japanese

Employees: 6,000 

Production capacity: 250,000 annual units

Regions where they export: 30 countries

in North, Central, South America and Europe

Founded in 1920, with its headquarters in Hiroshima, Japan; Mazda has 8 production plants worldwide. The only plant from the Japanese assembler in the Western Hemisphere is located in Salamanca, Guanajuato. The construction of this plant required a 770 million dollars of investment, starting operations in January 2014; it was officially opened in February that same year by the President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Mazda choose Guanajuato because the State has highly qualified personnel and an established network of suppliers, as well as infrastructure, railroad and highways which allow the easy access to the main port in the country.

Currently, the plant has more than 6,000 workers and a production capacity of 250,000 units per year, manufacturing models Mazda2 and Mazda3 in its two versions, hatchback and sedan, and the Yaris-R from Toyota.

90 % of the automobiles produced here are exported to more than 30 countries in the North, Central, South America and Europe, while the remaining 10 % stays in Mexico. The plant has the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications, which shows the strong commitment of Mazda as delivering the highest quality vehicles to its customers and, at the same time, contributes with the nature and environmental protection.

The Japanese assembler is convinced that optimizing the professional and personal development of its workers is fundamental for their project’s success in Mexico. That is why; it has training programs in Mexico and Japan, and promotion for unionized employees as well as administrative.

An example of this is the Global Training Program for Operators, through which Mazda has sent 100 unionized workers to Japan for a year in order to receive training in the production, maintenance and continuous improvement areas; this, together with the personnel that month after month is sent to the Japanese country for period of 1 to 6 months with the objective of perfect their knowledge and abilities.

Likely, it is important to emphasize that all production line supervisors have been developed within the company, being initially hired as operators and afterwards prepared and promoted to supervisors thanks to their talent and good performance.

Another very important and transcendent aspect for Mazda is to fulfill its good corporate citizen obligations through social responsibility activities. In that sense, the company has different initiatives addressed to interact with the local community, promote a healthy life and encourage the cultural exchange between Mexico and Japan. An example of that is the Ekiden relay race, a race of great tradition in Japan which has been organized by the assembler in Salamanca for three consecutive years and which third edition had the participation of almost 2,000 racers among workers, relatives and general public.