In 2003 NMUK produced approximately 332000 cars in 2003 when

In 2003, NMUK produced approximately 332000 cars in 2003, when three famous Nissan car models Primera, Micra, and Almera were being designed in London by Nissan Design Europe (NDE), engineered in Cranfield by Nissan Technical Center Europe (NTCE), manufactured and assembled in Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK (NMUK), and marketed by Nissan Motor Great Britain (NMGB).

Today, NMUK manufactures and assembles Nissan Qashqai, Nissan Juke, Nissan Leaf, Infiniti Q30, and Infiniti QX30 with more than 495000 cars produced in 2017.

NMUK is the UK's main car manufacturing plant located close to Sunderland.

It is possessed and ran by the European division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan. In terms of the number of cars produced annually for every person employed, it has been Europe's most fruitful car plant.

How did NMUK sustain world economic crises and improved productivity to be Europe most fruitful plant? This accomplishment is no chance. It was intended and planned for from the beginning. This case study expresses some of the key fundamentals that have yielded to Nissan's success.

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Sunderland is an attractive location for major manufacturers with lots of benefits. The first benefit is the availability of skilled labors; the second benefit is the accessibility thanks to good road, rail, and port of Tyne giving linking Sunderland with all major UK areas and exporting markets. Finally, the government supports manufacturers moving in similar rural areas, where investments are needed for employment opportunities, consists of both financial benefits and other incentives.

NMUK operation is based on the continuous production method; it draws from three main shops which are a body shop, paint, and final assembly.

Each of the cells is divided into multiple shops.

Panels are built in the press shop then moved to a robotics-controlled body shop to be pressed and welded creating a complete body shell. Afterward, the shell is moved to a 10 million pounds worth body paint shop, making Nissan Sunderland the first Nissan factory to produce luxury cars. In the body paint shop, car shells are carefully coated and painted to perfection fully protected and free from any imperfection.

Other on-site body shops are plastic shop for plastic components, plastic paint shop, casting shop for aluminum engine components manufacturing, unit shop for special engine components such as turbo or supercharge manufacturing, five-million-pound worth axle shop, and trim & chassis assembly lines where car body is fitted with interior and exterior components in reference to job order.

Finally, bodies, engines, and sub-frames are assembled together to form the final product which is then moved to the final assembly area for various aspects testing before being distributed to the dealer.

All this success is due to many factors mainly critical components of TQM that Nissan is using in its operations. Indeed, everything starts with a clear strategic plan that contains a vision and mission statement that are clearly stated and that are intended to be fulfilled and followed. Effectively, NMUK's vision "Enriching people's lives" and its mission is to "provide unique and innovative automotive products and services that deliver superior measurable values to all stakeholders in alliance with Renault" ; where both are combined by uninterruptedly finding customers' requirements and incessantly innovating the products they create which outcomes in uniquely addressing customer's needs and acquiring all of their clients trust and confidence by accomplishing customer satisfaction.

NMUK follows Nissan's top priority to keep customer satisfaction intact. For them, customers are the ones who define the quality of the product. Then we can notice the long-term obligation that Nissan has set since it "has been Europe's most productive car plant for the past seven years." In addition to all of this, Nissan puts great efforts on training and employee evolvement in their own training facility in order for them to grow their employees' skills. Finally, developing their employees on an educational and knowhow level isn't the only way the organization helps their workers evolve, but also creating strong decision makers by encouraging them to be more involved and empowering them in the workplace.

With more than 7000 permanent employees working at NMUK, Nissan is investing in more than 300 different courses available on site for all employees, in addition to on the job ongoing technical training, offering learning flexibility to all employees and making NMUK spending on training and developments more than the British industry average. Individuals are then evaluated at the end of each year to identify needed training for next year schedule.

NMUK applies the policy of one worker should be competent in three jobs and three workers should be capable of doing each job for efficient workforce allocation, job covering in case of absentees, and to increase workers motivation. This is accomplished by continuously rotating employees between various jobs to get the required skills of at least three jobs.

NMUK being a part of Nissan global, famously associated with Kaizen as continuous quality improvement, follows the same path and strategies to achieve common goals. NMUK is continuously investing in many projects to improve the production process which is mainly suggested by employees. These projects vary from small projects, such as reallocating boxes to be easily accessible by employees providing a safer environment and faster workflow, to large project such as the installation of a movable platform to follow cars down the assembly line preventing labor from walking around the cars while working.

NMUK do not offer financial rewards in return of improvement ideas but instead offers team rewards which can be used by the whole team such as entertainment facility, upgrading equipment in canteen·

All this success comes from core values that can be seen in Nissan's TQM.

First of all, the priority is always to keep customers satisfied in creating high-quality products

this is called a customer-driven quality. Second, the continuous innovation of their products by

recognizing and removing the core causes of the problems. The third root value is team spirit that

is present and encouraged since Nissan works on employee participation and development with

participative teams that brainstorm decision-making processes. Forth and foremost, preventing

problems before occurring is very important, instead of correcting errors and paying repair costs,

creating a system which prevents it from happening in the first place in order to diminish

reparation costs.

Ensuring quality using the just-in-time management policy ensures the reduction of time within production as well as the answer time from suppliers and customers by initially gathering assembled parts before production made vehicles reserved by clients produced just-in-time when being required. Everything can be installed with the least cost and the smallest amount of work improvement.

Indeed, for Nissan quality is related with the products that they produce, the operations that are being complete, and the environment where the processes are being achieved that surpasses customer prospects as well as bringing out the finest in both people and the industrial machines.