Blood, Sweat, Tears and Bourbon Went Into Building Lexus Plant

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – It took blood, sweat, tears and “a little Kentucky bourbon” to get a Lexus plant built and up and running in Georgetown, KY. But it’s paid off.

So says Wil James, president of Toyota Motor Mfg. in Kentucky, where the Japanese automaker has been making Toyotas since 1988.

But Lexus, Toyota’s luxury brand, comes with a heightened sense of company pride.

“The mindset and skill set are different” for building a Toyota Camry and a Lexus ES 300 sedan, James says at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars here.

Master craftsmen from Japan were brought over as trainers and select workers were picked for the first Lexus plant in the U.S. that cost $360 million to build, employs 750 workers and has an annual capacity of 50,000 units.

The Lexus approach runs counter to the traditional manufacturing belief that “if you have a good system in place, anyone can be trained for it,” James says. “This is different for Lexus.”

He offers an analogy: If someone with a math ability has taught algebra for 10 years, then decides to teach music without having much musical ability, it is technically possible to make the switch. But it’s inadvisable, “especially if you can’t sing,” James says.

The hand-picked Lexus trainees underwent a total of 1.5 million hours of study and instruction before they built their first ES 350. They were taught how to use the power of sight, sound and touch to detect production flaws.

They visited Lexus dealers to talk with salespeople and customers. Twenty-two ES 350s were purchased from dealers, disassembled and rebuilt again and again.

Workers learned the importance of kodawari, a Japanese word that means “every detail matters, because if you take care of small things, you can take care of big things,” James says.

Even the lobby of the new plant is specially designed to convey an image, he says. “It is quite Zen-like. There are handcrafted leather couches and special carpeting that cleans your shoes. The attention to detail was intentional, to remind people of what the Lexus mindset should be.”

Toyota introduced Lexus as a brand in the U.S. in 1989. Until now, Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. were built only in Japan and Canada.

James speculates that “having ES 350 production under our roof means we can build better cars across the entire Kentucky operation.”

The new plant, which opened in October, recently received a J.D. Power platinum award for initial quality. The overall Kentucky operation in its 28 years has received 10 J.D. Power quality awards, “but this is our first platinum,” James says.

It’s also the first platinum honor given to a plant in its first year, says CAR President and CEO Jay Baron.

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