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.