Toyota boosts parts output

Toyota boosts parts output

TOKYO (AFP): Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. will enhance its auto parts procurement systems in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia in line with plans to boost overseas output, a major economic daily said yesterday.

Toyota, the country's leading carmaker, will build a second parts center at or near its factory in Kentucky, where its largest U.S. plant is located, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

The new center, which will employ several hundred people, will be a hub for Toyota's Midwest operations, which also covers two other plants to become operational in 1998, it said.

The company will also boost the size of its existing parts center in Belgium as early as 1998 to meet a planned increase in output in Europe.

Toyota will raise European production by 70 percent from a year earlier in 1997, and is set to start assembling Corolla sedans in Britain in late 1998.

In Asia, the carmaker is to integrate the control of parts procurement in Southeast Asia at its management center in Singapore, rather than on a country-by-country basis, the Nihon Keizai said.