TOKYO —Nissan is back, one year after an earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan ground auto production to a halt, left giant cracks at a key factory and killed five employees and 17 family members. It’s a story of surprising recovery that’s playing out at other Japanese automakers, but particularly at Nissan.
Chief executive Carlos Ghosn called it “miraculous” Friday ahead of the disaster’s anniversary, crediting hard work at his company. The maker of the March subcompact and Infiniti luxury brands had a record sales year of 4.67 million vehicles in 2011. That was up 14 percent from the previous year.
By May, Nissan’s Iwaki plant in Fukushima prefecture, devastated by the disaster that killed more than 19,000 people, was almost completely restored to full operations.
But it’s not all plain sailing for Japan Inc. and its automakers. There are still big risks from perennial problems such as the strong yen, executives and analysts say. Globalization of production can help Japan’s automakers minimize the yen challenge but comes with its own potential headaches as shown by last year’s flooding in Thailand — a major production base for Japanese carmakers.
Toyota had initially expected to lose production of 2 million vehicles from the March 11, 2011, disaster, which damaged key suppliers in northeastern Japan, including Renesas Electronics, a computer-chip maker.
But when all was done, Japan’s No. 1 automaker ended up losing production of 370,000 vehicles. Production at Toyota, which makes the popular Camry sedan and Prius hybrid, was back to near-normal levels by September.
“The tremendous efforts of our workers on the ground led to a recovery so quick it was outside our imagination,” Toyota president Akio Toyoda said last year.
The production woes knocked Toyota from top place in global vehicle sales to No. 4. General Motors regained its crown as the world’s No. 1 automaker, which it had relinquished to Toyota in 2008.
The disaster even worked to identify weaknesses in the industry’s parts supply chain. The automakers are studying ways to spread out risks among suppliers. Toyota is targeting a plan to get production back to normal in two weeks if another disaster should strike.
Although the Japanese economy is ailing amid towering reconstruction costs, the auto industry is one bright spot.
Honda had the toughest problems, hit by the flooding in Thailand late last year, which also disrupted production. Still, Honda’s global production is now back at pre-disaster levels, except for Thailand.
The production disruptions reverberated globally.
In North America, Japanese manufacturers slowed their assembly lines or shut down production altogether when they couldn’t get parts from Japan. Michael Robinet, the managing director of IHS Automotive Consulting, estimates lost regional production totaled 400,000 vehicles.
