Tochigi vs. Suzuka

[manisandher]

I can see from my VIN that my '04 was made in the Tochigi plant. I'm assuming this was just before production was moved to the Suzuka plant. Does anyone know if there was a difference in quality between the NSXs made in these two plants? On the one hand, I can imagine that the workforce in Tochigi were much more experienced in making NSXs than the workforce in Suzuka. However, I'm sure some of the key players would have moved to Suzuka before production began there. Also, perhaps the manufacturing facilities at Suzuka were more modern than those at Tochigi?

It still seems really strange to me that Honda decided to move production to Suzuka for just one year. Surely this could not have been a good economic decision.

Any thoughts?

Mani.

[TheSebringOne]

I think I read somewhere that production was moved to coincide with the eventual winding down of car
production at the end of 2005? Honda knew the car could not meet new stricter Co2 emissions.

[markc]

Harry Hill would say, "there's only one way to find out... F-I-G-H-T" :laugh:

Seriously though, it does seem crazy to move the final production to a completely different facility many miles away. I would assume they transferred some people as well as the production line tooling so that quality wasn't adversely effected. They can only have made a few hundred cars there?

I guess the bean counters did their sums and it made financial sense... on paper at least.

Cheers

Mark

[NZNick]

Is it true that the final few hundred (350-750?) cars were assembled at Suzuka (by some of the same hand-picked staff), as many significant components had been created at Tochigi and other sites, or could be sourced from suppliers as and when they were required? Perhaps Kaz can shed some light on this?

[Nick Graves]

Remember the S2000 moved with it and that lasted until 2009. That was probably the deciding factor.

Because of their flexible manufacturing, Honda regularly seem to shuffle the production around their US factories, according to volume changes.

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

I have seen the NSX assembly line at Tochigi Takanezawa factory by myself but not the one at Suzuka so can’t comment from my own experience but from what I heard from my friends, the build quality would be the same or even better from the point of whole package.

Moving the production line may sound waste of time and money if you simply look at it from chassis assembly point of view but if you look at from the total package, it makes sense.

When NSX used to be assembled at Tochigi factory, the engine was manufactured and assembled at different factory, about 2 – 3Hrs south from there.
Then, sent to Tochigi to be installed into the chassis.

The Gbox parts were manufactured miles away from Tochigi by several companies and then all the parts were sent to and assembled at Suzuka factory.
Then, back to Tochigi for the installation.

So, NSX Tochigi factory was assembly line without manufacturing process.

Honda launched its own philosophy to manufacture and assemble the production car at one place in order to aim for the better quality control, efficiency, etc and hence, the assembly of NSX, S2000 and Insight (hybrid) were moved to Suzuka in May/04.

Almost all of the welding robots, facilities including the power plant station were moved to Suzuka and some of the robots were even replaced with the new compact and improved version.

There were 16 specialists at the welding section and 10 of them were the original members from Tochigi and moved to Suzuka. At the final welding process, the chassis will be filed down (or I should use the word ‘polished’ because of the way they move the file). They can feel the unevenness of the aluminium surface by the order of 0.02mm with their finger.

Then off to the paint section. It will take 5days just to complete one NSX for the painting process. Lots and lots of checking process and due to the characteristic of the water based paint, the metallic contents will ‘settle’ differently compared to the ordinary paint. Hence, if you try to partially re-spray your NSX with any metallic paint, you will really struggle to match the same reflection to the original paint.

The assembly section was handled by the same 5 specialists moved from Tochigi. 3 days required assembling one NSX and this was the same at Tochigi. Obviously, it was assembled by hand.

For the engine, there were only 2 specialists selected out of more than 400 applicants for the NSX engine assembly section. Each engine was assembled by just single person so one engine per day per specialist.
Very precious engine….

Gbox is also hand built. During the process, the gear teeth were filed down by hand until they smoothly engaged each other and then each Gbox would go through the dyno check.

Final chassis check section was very strict.
First, the tyre pressure was adjusted and then warmed up by running the NSX on the rolling road. Then, the initial alignment check up. Another warm up run and final alignment adjustment would be carried out.
The gear shifting feeling, the suspension movement, etc were checked and then off to the proving ground for the test driving session including the braking test from high speed.


Before moving from Tochigi to Suzuka, Honda first built a reference chassis at Tochigi factory and then placed lots and lots of reference holes for the assembly jig.
Then, at Suzuka, they relocated all of the jigs and aligned them to the reference holes so that the build quality would be the same as the Tochigi one.
They first tried this on S2000 body from early May/2004 and spent about 1 month for the test production/assembly process with the final adjustment before officially started the production of S2000 at Suzuka from 1st June 2004.
Same test production process was used for NSX and it officially started the production at Suzuka from 1st July 2004.


There are lots of other stories involved and not enough time to introduce all of them here but I hope you can get some idea.

Welding is the key for the production car frame and with these specialists, personally, I won’t worry about the build quality of any NSX, regardless of its origin from Tochigi or Suzuka.

Kaz

[TheSebringOne]

Once again, thank you Kaz for enlighting us.

[NSXGB]

Great read. Thanks Kaz.

[manisandher]

... personally, I won’t worry about the build quality of any NSX, regardless of its origin from Tochigi or Suzuka.


WOW! Thanks for this Kaz. Your writeup makes me even happier to have chosen an NSX over the other (new) cars I test-drove - just the sheer commitment, passion and attention to detail that went into making these things is amazing. Actually, I feel more of a 'steward' than an 'owner' of my NSX. All I need now is some of your time to give my car a good once over ;-)

Cheers,
Mani.

[havoc]

Each time I hear more about the way the NSX was built I get more and more impressed with the attention to detail. Which mfrs today outside of the hypercar makers, and maybe Lexus (with the LF-A) would do some of that???

Thanks again Kaz!