Japan 14 Companies Will Unify Car Spares Specifications

"Japanese Economic News" reported on June 5 that 14 domestic automobile and motorcycle companies including Toyota and Nissan will unify specifications of high commonality components and automotive semiconductor etc. Objective parts and components will be selected within the year to promote standardization, in order to reduce the cost of spare parts development and production. The whole industry will together reduce duplicated investment and improve the competitiveness of Japanese cars. At the same time, the decision also aims to combat European companies which lead in automotive-related standards and technology.

 

Eight passenger car companies including Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Four truck companies, motorcycle companies including Hino, Yamaha, Kawasaki will establish "International Standard Seminar" all together. 

 

Japan's automobile enterprises had been designing components alone in accordance with respective specifications and ordered from cooperative enterprises. In order to cope with the fierce price competition, centered on small cars, manufacturers have begun to promote standardization of spare parts such as steel, auto semiconductor etc. By reducing the production category, they have achieved the effect of decreasing procurement cost by 5%.

 

However, centered on large-scale companies such as Toyota and Nissan, investments burden of cutting-edge technology such as fuel cell vehicles and automatic driving increases sharply. In emerging-market countries, due to the low price of local special automobile, the price competition is increasingly intensified. Therefore, implementation of unified specification within the whole industry is decided. 

 

In addition, companies will promote the standardization of wireless technology which is indispensable for automatic driving to speed up a new market forming. Japan is making its Japanese standard as international standard in emerging markets, which will make Japanese companies take advantage of competition with overseas companies.