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Nissan's plan to cut 12,500 jobs with most of the pain taken overseas is exactly the wrong prescription for a business whose least productive factories are in Japan bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @bopinion
@bopinion Useful stat to remember is that while Nissan as a whole produces about 40 cars per employee -- one of the best records in the industry -- in Japan it's a pretty poor 15 per person.
@bopinion Only high-end carmakers like Daimler and BMW can normally get away with that sort of high labor intensity. Without exports to other countries, Nissan's domestic operation is no bigger than its UK business.
@bopinion That might be fine, as long as Nissan makes better margins on cars by making them in Japan and exporting them to other countries than it would make but building them in those markets. But it's almost impossible for outsiders to gauge whether this is the case or not.
@bopinion Underutilized production facilities in lower-income countries like India, Thailand and Mexico and highly productive ones in the U.S. and U.K. should be the winners of this restructuring. But it looks like politics will win out to protect Japan, instead. That's the wrong result.
