Key managers are being hired, especially in production, for Toyota’s $140 million, 350,000-square-foot Tacoma pickup truck and truck bed plant set to break ground on 700 acres in Tijuana. Work on the concrete foundation is under way this month with the structural shell beginning next month by Graycor International’s Mexican affiliate.

Truck bed production begins in summer 2004, and welding, painting and assembly of full trucks, the next year. Annual production capacity will be 20,000 trucks along with 170,000 truck beds for shipment to Toyota’s existing plant in Fremont. Employment of 400 is projected.

“We want this to be one of the best manufacturing plants in the world — a benchmark operation — with the best of Mexico, the United States and Japan,” says James M. Wiseman, v.p. of external affairs for Toyota.

“We want to make this a Mexican plant from top to bottom,” he told a San Diego World Trade Center audience during a joint event with the Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana. “We expect the turnover rate to be very low (similar to its U.S. rate of less than 2 percent). We haven’t had a layoff in 40 years.”

Toyota has 500 suppliers in North America and spends $13 billion in parts and materials annually. Vendors are expected to conform to Toyota’s Just In Time philosophy on supplies and inventory.

“The industry standard (for supplying) is two weeks; Toyota wants it in two days,” says Hartmut Schroeder, president and CEO of Snugtop, which makes camper shells for Toyota pickups. “No excuses are acceptable. There’s snow on the grapevine? They’re not really interested in that.” It took Snugtop eight years of proposals before Toyota accepted the company as a vendor.

“We went through their vendor development process. It’s a very detailed, very painful process,” says Fernando Espinosa of Qualifind, an executive staffing service. “They say, ‘we want all this information (from the vendors). We learned a lot. We can’t be improvising. We have to think ahead.’”

Espinosa, who lived and studied in Japan for a year, says Toyota is different from other companies because of its interest in its people. “It’s the first time I see a company training in (another) culture,” he says.

— Terence J. Burke