Honda opens $35M training facility, museum By Brian Bondus MARYSVILLE, Oh. --- (December 19, 2014) Honda has completed a $35 million expansion to its Marysville plant that includes research and training facilities for technicians across North America. It’s called the Honda Heritage Center and also includes a museum highlighting the history of Honda in North America that will open to the public in January. The 160,000-square-foot facility includes five classrooms and robotic cells designed to give technicians a more hands-on experience, according to Honda of America Chief Operating Officer Tom Shoupe. “The development of our associate’s skills is very important to our future competitiveness,” Shoupe said. This summer the company opened another training facility at its Anna Engine Plant called the Powertrain Technical Center. Honda associates test new equipment before it goes into mass production and train on 107 different technologies at that location. Honda employs 13,000 Ohioans, including 5,000 in the Miami Valley. More than 1,440 of its workers come from Clark and Champaign counties. In 2013, Honda produced more than 492,400 vehicles at its Marysville plant alone, a 12 percent increase from 2012. The company also now ships more American-made cars from the U.S. than it imports from Japan. “If you look at the track record and what we have been able to accomplish here with community partnerships and associates, I think you can see that we are investing for the future in Ohio,” Shoupe said. “Not just in this training and development center but also in our operations. We are investing and trying to grow and apply technologies that will allow us to be competitive for a long time.” The company’s four Ohio plants surround Bellefontaine and Logan County Commissioner John Bayliss said it has been amazing in his 18 years as a commissioner to watch the community grow as Honda has. “Our economy has gone from agricultural based to manufacturing based,” Bayliss said. “It’s improved our standard of living. We’ve been able to improve our schools. We’ve been able to improve those amenities that may be more (available) to metropolitan areas.” He said he remembers when Honda was just producing motorcycles, and the investments into automotive manufacturing and research and development has been encouraging for the community. Honda opened its first North American plant in Marysville in 1979 and Brad Alty was one of the original 64 associates. “They took a chance with an 18 year old and I took a chance with a young company, and it paid off,” Alty said. The Champaign County native has taken a promotion and is now helping to improve efficiency at the company’s Alabama plant. “I am who I am today because Honda invested in me,” Alty said. Early on he and other employees would assemble five motorcycles in the morning and then take them apart in the afternoon. “The point of it was to teach us every piece and intricacy of this bike so when we built it, it was built right,” he said.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 09:15:14 +0000
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