Tetsuo Iwamura, shown at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, becomes the new chief operating officer of Honda's global automotive operations.
Honda will be moving its North American corporate headquarters to Ohio – where it set up Japan’s first auto assembly plant in the U.S. more than 30 years ago. Adding even more significance to the move is the promotion of Tetsuo Iwamura who will now serve as Honda’s global chief operating officer of automotive operations as well as COO of Honda North America.
About 50 executives and support staff are expected to make the move to Marysville, Ohio from the maker’s long-standing base of operations in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance. But the California facility will remain Honda’s sales and marketing base of operations for the U.S.
“These organizational changes will improve the speed of decision-making and the efficiency of our business operations,” said Iwamura, who will now wear a number of hats including president and chief operating officer for North America, as well as the new assignments as the COO of Automobile Operations and risk management officer for Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
He is expected to split his time between Marysville, Torrance and Honda’s global headquarters in Tokyo.
The changes – which include a number of other executive appointments and reassignments – underscore the increasing importance of the North American market to the third-largest of the Japanese automakers. Indeed, there was a time when some industry insiders thought Honda might move its corporate headquarters to the U.S., its largest market and primary source of profits.
The maker and founder Soichiro Honda had long been considered outsiders in the clubby Japanese business world – in fact, there was opposition to giving Honda permission to go into the automotive market. The maker enhanced its maverick status when it set up the first Japanese-owned motorcycle plant and in 1982 followed with its Marysville assembly line.
It has since set up a network of component and assembly plants from Canada to Mexico. Honda recently announced plans to become a net exporter of cars and crossover from this North American network even as it targets continued growth within the three-nation NAFTA region.
One of the potential benefits for U.S. consumers will be having their needs and desires more strongly influence what Honda does on a worldwide basis, suggested a senior company executive in a background conversation with TheDetroitBureau.com.
That is no small matter. American Honda has had its struggles selling a number of the maker’s niche products, such as the CRZ and Insight, in recent years, and U.S. sales and marketing chief John Mendel told TheDetroitBureau.com in an interview last year that a key issue was that many of those models were not really designed with American motorists in mind.
The decision to leave sales and marketing in California is not a surprise. That is Honda’s largest state market and considered a bellwether of trends that the maker hopes to tap into.
But moving corporate operations to Ohio allows the maker to cross-connect a wide arrange of subsidiary operations that touch not only automotive design, engineering and manufacturing but also motorcycles, power products and other ventures.
The 50 employees moving to Ohio will barely impact the overall staff count in that central state, where Honda already employs 13,500 workers – and the California marketing and sales staff will retain most of the current 2,500-member staff. The maker says there’s no immediate plan to hire more employees in Ohio.
In typical fashion, however, some of those who will be offered the chance to make the move likely will opt out. That was the case when Nissan decided to move its corporate U.S. operations, including sales and marketing, from California to suburban Nashville, Tennessee a few years ago.
Both makers continue to run satellite operations across North America, including advanced design studios and engineering facilities in places like California, Arizona and Michigan.
The only other Japanese maker not located in California is Subaru. Its U.S. subsidiary was originally launched by an American-owned importer and based in Cherry Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia. It remained there after the operation was taken over by Subaru’s global parent, Fuji Heavy Industries.