Vietnamese empowered to design Japanese cars

The work of around 1,000 Vietnamese engineers at Nissan Techno Vietnam Co (NTV), the Hanoi-based subsidiary of the Japanese carmaker Nissan, bore sweet fruits to the company, US$23 million in earnings in 2009.

Established in 2001 as the first overseas base for Nissan Techno which plays a major role in the Nissan Group R & D organization, NTV focuses exclusively on automobiles by utilizing the latest hardware and software technologies for designing, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE).

It deals predominantly with vehicle development processes, ranging from styling to design, and make significant contributions to the body, vehicle engine and transmission units and analysis.

In October 2003, as the first wave of Vietnamese engineers returned home after completing their sponsored program of study in Japan, they started to work for NTV.

They were quickly put in charge of the first 3 stages of car making process, styling, designing and production engineering, Juji Matsuo, technical director of NTV told Tuoi Tre. And they have never looked back since then.

The Vietnamese staff, contributing 40-90 percent of the workload at each stage, has helped improve and shorten the processes that were strictly followed by their Japanese colleagues for years.

“Since everything was brand new to us, we dared to change after careful studying,” engineer Luong Hong Thuong told Tuoi Tre, adding that one of his Vietnamese colleagues shortened the testing time on computer stimulation testing model by 30 percent. The initiative has been widely in use after gaining much praise from the company’s leaders.

A new car needs around 30,000 parts designed by a team of 2,000 engineers, said Akio Chiba, NTV general director.

Most of the parts of the Sedan Nissan Teana and the mini MPV Nissan Cube are designed here in Vietnam, he said, adding that NTV Vietnamese engineers are also responsible for hundreds of parts of other Nissan cars.

“We are employing more Vietnamese engineers to replace Japanese specialists here in NTV,” he added.

Besides designing and engineering, NTV Vietnamese engineers have other responsibilities as well, such as calculating the costs of making those car parts for specific markets with special features in mind, like weather and environmental conditions and customers’ taste.

For customers, a car recall simply means massive maintenance work but for the NTV engineers, it is a nightmare that may put an end to their career, said Nguyen Van Huy, an engineer who has worked with NTV for 8 years.

“As auto parts are interconnected, even a small fault on one part can cause deadly consequences on the others,” he explained.

“Just one part goes wrong and the designer will find himself the most miserable man in the world,” Matsuo said.

“As we are employing more Vietnamese engineers at NTV, one day Vietnam’s auto markets will have their own cars designed by their Vietnamese engineers,” Akio Chiba said. – Tuoitre

Tags: Nissan Techno Vietnam