World's biggest game of pick-up-sticks got out of hand
Recently, we embarked on the thrill ride of a lifetime down to visit the Nissan car manufacturing plant in Sunderland (despite bus drivers questionable ability to stay between the white lines on the motorway ). Death bus and pit stops aside, the trip proved to be rather insightful.
the tour was roughly 4 hours long, and considering we only saw 10% of the production line in that time, you will appreciate the scale of manufacturing going on down there. The question i found myself asking was, who buys Nissans? Now we’re talking the Juke and the Qashqai here, not the GT-R unfortunately. When u consider the fact the staff work around a 3 x 8 hour shift day ( 1 each of course ) we have 24 hour production, with each man on the line given 90s ( i think ) to complete their task which might be welding, fixing, putting in the windshield, putting in the dashboard etc. This results in roughly 440 cars per 8 hour shift, 1300 cars a day and 480 000 cars, Nissans, a year. Who buys them?!
I can honestly say, i haven’t seen that level of Nissan % on our roads in the UK, but there is a good reason for this. 80% of the production output is export meaning that there isn’t 480 000 cars worth of sale price money being pumped back into the UK economy, which i think is unfortunate.
The recent announcement of a new model to be manufactured in Sunderland came the day after we left Nissan. This would provide 2000 new jobs, which is excellent in the current economic climate and double dip recession. Unfortunately this came labelled with a £9.3M grant from the government, which in the case of the tories, is never a good thing. But that debate can wait for another time.
So i guess it was an insightful but slightly disappointing tour, in terms of the financial information we found out. I was amazed to see how many people they have working on the line ( excess of 6000 ) and how each and every one has a part to play in keeping this incredibly daunting, well oiled machine chugging along. But the revelation that most of it goes out as export slightly ruined it for me but i will always remember that moment when i thought the machines were going to turn into transformers and kill us all.
Design Personifications 