After years of cleaning up the recall crisis over faulty Takata airbag inflators, the company that now owns the former supplier's factories is taking that cleanup to its core.
Joyson Safety Systems, the airbag producer owned by China's Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. but globally headquartered in suburban Detroit, is introducing a strict new operating system at its more than 50 plants, requiring local managers to adopt standardized quality and reporting practices and waste- reduction programs.
It is a long-term rollout of a new rulebook that began last year under the direction of Detroit supplier veteran Silvano Restiotto, vice president of the Global Joyson Production System. With a small team of administrators, Restiotto is moving plant by plant, from Brazil to Hungary to China to Mexico to the U.S., to convert all of the company's plants — and possibly its 12 global engineering centers — to the new system.
"When we bought Takata…