Toyota assures no delay in deliveries
Toyota Motor Thailand has insisted that it had enough finished inventory to make deliveries to customers for more than a month and none of its 7,000 workers would be affected by the production suspension.
Toyota yesterday announced the suspension in production at all three of its auto plants until Saturday after its parts suppliers in Ayutthaya were paralysed by the flood.
The carmaker’s facilities in other countries may also face shortages of auto parts from Thailand.
A Toyota source said assembly lines were shut down on Monday afternoon at the Ban Pho and Gateway Industrial Estate plants in Chachoengsao and the Samrong plant in Samut Prakan.
About 10 auto-parts manufacturers in Ayutthaya cannot deliver products to the three assembly plants. Toyota cannot source those auto parts from overseas because it takes time to place orders.
The source said the situation now was worse than in March after the tsunami hit Japan. Then, Toyota Thailand had to cut production by about 50 per cent, but now it has to stop all production.
Toyota is looking to secure parts from abroad.
The source insists that its customers will not suffer delays in deliveries over the next few months. Toyota has the capacity to roll out 550,000 units per year, but it targets 680,000 units this year. The company delivers about 30,000 vehicles per month.
Pending the resumption of production, all daily workers will still come to the plants for skills training.
This is the same mode that Toyota used during the disruption caused by the tsunami in Japan.
The company will decide on Saturday or Monday whether production can be restarted.
The next problem is that Toyota Thailand might not be able to provide auto parts to Toyota’s other manufacturing locations in Asean, the source added.
Another industry source said four or five more carmakers were considering halting their production, as they were running into the same problem as Toyota.
Ford Motor Co said it had suspended production at a factory in Thailand for two days.
“As some suppliers operating in Ayutthaya province have been affected, production was suspended at our AutoAlliance Thailand facility this morning for the next 48 hours to make a full assessment of inventory and logistics continuity,” Ford said yesterday in a statement.
Aapico Hitech reported that the Hi-Tech Industrial Estate, which is in Ayutthaya, and the company were continuing to work on augmenting the flood-protection level, according to a filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The situation at the industrial estate was under control as the water was lower than the protected level, it said.
The factory and production were operating normally and logistics could be used normally, the company said.
