Honda to Streamline Product Offerings

Hmmm, in the US gone would be the Crosstour (2014 already the last year for that model in Canada), with the CR-Z rumoured next to get the axe.  With regards to variants, I guess they mean from continent to continent.  (Everything that Acura is is a variant).

Takanobu Ito

by Yoko Kubota of www.wsj.com

ASAHIKAWA, Japan— Honda Motor Co. plans to streamline product offerings over the next several years in an effort to ensure quality of its vehicles, executives said.

The auto maker is looking at narrowing down model variations of certain cars and engines, Honda executives said Saturday at a two-day test-driving event in Asahikawa, northern Japan.

Such reductions would start to come in three or four years, Takanobu Ito , Honda’s chief executive officer, told reporters a day earlier.

“We want to be more efficient,” Mr. Ito said on the sidelines of the test-driving event. “Even though we’re narrowing these down, that doesn’t mean our business would shrink.”

For instance, the company could keep one model while getting rid of a less popular sister model that shares many product characteristics but has some different features, executives said. They declined to name specific products that could be affected with the plan.

The move is a part of Honda’s efforts to improve its vehicle development process and overall operations after a spate of recalls.

Honda recalled its redesigned Fit subcompact car in Japan five times in the year since its launch in September 2013 for problems including software glitches. To prevent similar problems, it beefed up on technology verification procedures and as a result, had to push back multiple launches for new or redesigned vehicles in Japan in 2014.

Reduction by a fifth is the target, executives said, though they offered varying views on what exactly they were planning to cut. Yoshiharu Yamamoto, who heads Honda’s research and development, said Honda could reduce the model variations of vehicles by about a fifth. Koichi Fukuo, Honda’s senior managing officer who oversees vehicle quality, said the burden of engineers should be cut by a fifth.

Both agreed that they want to address the issue of Honda’s overworked engineers.

Overtime has become the norm for some Honda engineers as they try to meet increasingly varied vehicle needs to respond to the company’s global reach into new markets. As a result, some engineers haven’t been able to invest enough time and resources needed for developing new and interesting technologies that could help distinguish Honda from its rivals in the long-run, said Mr. Fukuo.

But the idea of streamlining product offerings is already stirring debate within Honda, executives said, adding that regional operations and dealers would still want various vehicles that meet local tastes.

Source;
http://www.wsj.com/articles/honda-to-streamline-product-offerings-1423937788