The Secret to Success of Nissan

Task Performance
Submitted By: Neil Carlo Ibarra

Submittted To: Mr. Cesar Reyes

Summary

With the increasing trend of globalization and heightened competition, most of the

companies at some point of time think of expanding to new locations because of

different imperatives ranging from efficiency, growth, competition, knowledge or

mix of few. Each company decides its own parameters while making strategic

choices of a market or a country. Every firm has a different strategy to make

choices of the countries, understand their market potential, and make risk-return

analysis of the country. The firm then determines the entry mode strategy after

deciding a country and how and to what extent, they want to transplant their DNA

to the new venture. The automobile industry is one such industry where one

needs to be globally competitive to survive and as well as to keep growing. Many

automobile companies have ventured into different countries for one or more
imperatives mentioned earlier. Nissan Motors is one of such companies which

have made its presence felt in all the parts of the world.

Automobile Industry in most parts of the world is highly competitive which has led

companies to go for global expansion and form strategic alliances to be

competitive in the market. The companies are moving towards the fast growing

developing nations for their new market and even using them for exporting

vehicles to other parts of the world. Automotive industry is also incorporating new

technologies. The launch of hybrid engine cars in the recent past is one of the

major technological advancement. Many companies are working to produce

electric vehicles and looking for another means of fuel for the cars. The

automobile industry is constantly changing. Due to the recent global recession,

there has been a slowdown in the demand of vehicles and people are moving

towards small compact cars which are normally low priced. Many companies

which earlier normally catered to luxury segment are also entering this new

attractive segment. Global expansion has been the foray of automobile industry

since long. Companies started expanding themselves since early 1900’s. Nissan

is also one of the major automobile companies which started its global expansion

around 50 years back.

SWOT Analysis
Strengths

-Was the second largest Japanese car manufacturer

-Had become the top-selling import in the U.S market

-Had a loyal following due to its horsepower and affordability

Weaknesses

-A long line of management missteps

-Name change hurt the familiarity of the company

-Inability to maintain good working relationships with suppliers

-Became complacent and showed no signs of urgency

Opportunities

-Growth through forming an alliance with Renault

-The relocation of manufacturing plants as a cost cutting effort

-Emerging global car manufacturers

-Internal dissonance with the newly formed alliance

-Gas prices and economy

Question and Answer

1. Enumerate and describe, with examples, which critical components of total

quality management did Nissan use in its operations.

 Strategically-Based – Nissan has a comprehensive strategic plan

that contains its vision and mission statement.

 Customer-Focused (Internal & External) – Nissan’s top priority is

customer satisfaction where external customers define quality of

products while internal customers define the quality of people.

 Long-Term Commitment – Nissan has been the most productive

car plant for 7 long years.

 Education and Training – Nissan provides the vitality of training due

to the sophisticated systems that they use since they are a hi-tech

industry. Their training department conducts training to assess

individual employees’ needs.

employees to become multi-skilled decision makers by encouraging

them to be involved and participative.

2. Research on Nissan’s vision and mission. How did they incorporate these

in the company?

 VISION:

NISSAN: Enriching people’s lives.

 MISSION:

Nissan provides unique and innovative automotive products and

services that deliver superior measurable values to all stakeholders

in alliance with Renault.

Nissan incorporates their mission vision statement by identifying customer

requirements and continuously innovating the products they manufacture

and this in turn results in uniquely addressing customers’ needs and

gaining all of its clients’ trust and confidence by achieving customer

satisfaction.

3. What are the core values that can be seen in Nissan’s total quality

management? Use examples to defend your answers.

satisfaction, they make it a number one priority to understand

customer requirements in creating high quality.

 Continuous Improvement – Nissan continues to innovate their

products by identifying and eliminating the root causes of problems.

 Employee Participation and Development – Nissan organizes

employees into participative teams that brainstorm decision-making

processes.

 Design Quality and Prevention – This core value is related to

continuous improvement where Nissan makes it a habit to prevent

problems instead of correcting them to minimize repair costs by

creating error-tolerant operating processes.

 Long-Range Outlook – Nissan is UK’s largest manufacturing plant

for 7 long and strong years.

4. Describe how Nissan used just-in-time management to ensure quality in its

products.

Nissan aims to primarily reduce flow times within production as well as

response times from suppliers and to customers by initially collecting

assembled parts before production. Because of this, vehicles that have

been reserved by clients including its components are produced

just-in-time the specific vehicle is being demanded. In addition, other

components such as seat cushions, hood colors, rear-view mirrors,

amount of cost and the minimum amount of work-in-progress.

5. Based on the case, how does Nissan define quality?

Nissan defines quality as a process that is associated with the products

that they manufacture, the operations that are being done, and the

environment where the processes are being performed that exceeds

customer expectations as well as bringing out the best in both people and

machines.