NEWS

By Everdeen Mason, Staff Writer
Updated 4:23 PM Sunday, March 4, 2012

SPRINGFIELD — Honda’s investment of more than $500 million in Ohio plants in the last 15 months is good news for its 13,500 employees in the state.

It also benefits thousands more through work at area Honda suppliers.

Auto industry analyst David Cole described growth at major manufacturers such as Honda as a “multiplier,” meaning it creates jobs outside of the company.

“The multiplier at Honda, Ford, GM, wherever, is about 10,” said Cole, chairman emeritus at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. “So for every job in Honda, there are another 9 in the economy at suppliers or spin-off jobs.”

Honda employs 1,400 people from Clark and Champaign counties and an additional 1,300 from the rest of the Miami Valley.

As production increases in Honda’s plants in Marysville, Anna, Russells Point and East Liberty, local suppliers are able to increase their production to match.

“At the Anna plant, we just added a second shift,” said Honda spokesperson Ron Lietzke of the $98 million expansion that will bring 150 jobs to the Anna plant. “That impacts 70 suppliers in a positive way.”

Honda spends $5.8 billion on parts from Ohio suppliers, more than any other state.

Honda has a special relationship with its Ohio suppliers, as the state is the “center of Honda manufacturing for all of North America,” Lietzke said.

Honda officials would not release a full list of local suppliers, but a Springfield News-Sun search found three major local suppliers that provide nearly $379,000 in property taxes — according to Clark and Champaign county auditor’s offices — and employ more than 1,200 people. Three of these suppliers have expanded recently because of the growth, adding a total of 100 new jobs.

YAMADA North America, which has a plant in South Charleston with more than 300 employees, has increased production by 20 percent, said T. Marcus Murray, president of the company’s business planning and control division.

YAMADA — which makes automotive parts such as drive shafts, steering columns and oil and water pumps — expects another 4 percent to 5 percent increase in production over the coming year, he added.

“We’ve been on a very fast pace since November,” Murray said. “We’re also expecting that with additions to other Honda plants, we’ll be asked for new business activity also.”

YAMADA is also headed into a nearly $20 million, 236,000-square-foot expansion that will bring almost 60 new jobs. Murray said construction will begin in late March or early April, and hiring will begin in the summer.

Champaign County supplier KTH has already added jobs because of Honda’s recent growth. KTH hired nearly 40 full-time employees, bringing their total to 750, said Andrew Donahoe, manager of administration.

The welded and stamped auto parts manufacturer recently completed a 
$3.2 million, 57,000-square-foot expansion “to accommodate a couple new product lines from Honda. We anticipate that that will require some additional hiring in the summer time to man those new production lines,” Donahoe said.

Honda has sprung back from serious setbacks due to natural disasters last year.

Cole said the double whammy of the economic downturn and natural disasters served to reveal how fragile the industry and supply chain are. He used the example of a paint company that had to shut down because of a loss of Honda business, which in turn affected other companies that needed that paint color.

“That’s the impact that a relatively small number of suppliers could do to the industry,” Cole said. “There’s a high level of fragility in suppliers. Shut suppliers down, that would have in turn taken the entire industry down.”

KTH and another local supplier, Trutec, both experienced losses last year because of natural disasters.

“After what we’ve been through with the tsunami and Thailand flooding, we realized we’re so much more of a global economy,” said Art Liming Jr., vice president and plant manager from KTH. “It’s a little bit scary what’s happening; you don’t know what could happen in Iran or with the weather. We’re appreciative of the current status.”

Like much of the auto industry, Trutec was hurt by the economic downturn as well as the tsunami last year, which had a “strong but temporary impact on some of the auto industry,” Joe Gummel, the company vice president, wrote in an e-mail.

But since then, Honda and companies such as Trutec have recovered. To accommodate recent growth, Trutec has hired three engineers as well as some part-time students from Springfield-Clark Career Technology Center, Gummel said.

Trutec — which has 175 Springfield employees — does heat treating for steel components found in automotive transmissions, engines and break assemblies, as well as coating auto parts to protect them from wear and corrosion, Gummel said.

Honda’s way of building supplier relationships has become an industry standard, Cole said.

“The Japanese in general tend to be very, very slow in developing relationships with suppliers, but once they develop they become very, very strong,” Cole said. With Honda, “this is stronger in Ohio than anywhere else.”

Lietzke said Ohio was an attractive location for Honda for several reasons, including a good workforce, an established manufacturing base and good highways for transportation. Now, Honda manufactures and develops a majority of its North American product here.

“All of this makes Ohio very special for Honda,” Lietzke said. “We’ve maintained partnerships with the state of Ohio and local communities.”

And this coming year looks to be a major one for Honda and suppliers. This year Honda starts production on a number of new cars, such as the new Acura IOX, the next generation RDX and the new Honda Accord.

“There are a lot of new products to be built in Ohio and put out to market,” Lietzke said. “A lot is coming together this year now that the economy is recovering.”

By Elaine Morris Roberts, Staff Writer
5:59 PM Thursday, August 19, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — A local heat treating company has announced it will expand its facility to accommodate increased sales and to provide better long-term support to its customers. Trutech Industries’ Springfield facility, 4700 Gateway Blvd. inside PrimeOhio Industrial Park, will add a new 55,000 square-foot building to its existing 79,000 square feet of space. The new facility will house new heat treatment furnaces, according to Vice President Joe Gummel. The project will be a “substantial investment,” he said, but Gummel declined to attach a total dollar amount to construction and equipment. The Springfield facility, which mainly serves customers in the automotive and appliance industries, opened in 1990 and expanded in 1998. It now supports about 165 employees and has added about 25 jobs this year. “We’ve been able to add those jobs due to increased sales,” said Gummel. Owned by Nihon Parkerizing Co., Ltd. of Tokyo, Trutech established its Ohio operations in 1988 with a chemical treatment processes facility at 4795 Upper Valley Pike in Urbana. That facility presently supports about 85 employees. As with many manufacturing companies across the country, Trutech experienced a decline customers during the later part of 2008 and much of 2009. “We reduced (employment rolls) some due to the economy, but have been able to add most of those back,” Gummel said. The jobs lost were filled by temporary workers; no full-time employees were laid off and some jobs are new positions. “There has been some return of customer volume. ...We are seeing some improvement, but things have not returned to pre-recession levels in 2007,” Gummel said. The addition to the Springfield facility is being made, in part, to give Trutech the capacity to increase its business, which may bring more work to town. Current staffing is sufficient to operate the new equipment at current levels of production. “It is unclear at this time whether the expansion will allow for more jobs to be added. It really depends upon economic conditions — it depends on the volume of business that comes in,” Gummel said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0371 or elroberts@coxohio.com.