Japanese manufacturers have revived production at factories in the country’s earthquake-ravaged northeast but Toyota Motor Corp. has announced that it will halt 18 production lines for a few days next week owing to a supply shortage.
The world’s largest manufacturer by sales clarified that the 18 lines at 11 of its domestic plants will be shut down for three days due to the 7.4 magnitude earthquake this week. It had to shut down three plants, which resulted in a loss of 20,000 units in output. Meanwhile, the continued chip shortage has already trimmed Toyota’s global production target.
Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., the world’s biggest producer of ceramic capacitors for cellphones and automobiles, said it resumed production at two of its idled plants on Friday and the remaining two will start next week.
It was also learned that some equipment was damaged in a fire at a facility that makes chip inductors.
Renesas Electronics Corp, which produces about a third of the microcontroller chips used in automobiles internationally, also declared that it has resumed operations at two of its factories but it has left the third partially shut down. The company expects all three factories, including the Naka factory where a fire had broken out last year, to be back to pre-quake capacity by Wednesday.
Tech giant Sony Group Corp. is also slowly resuming production at three of its plants located in the quake-affected zone, according to a spokesperson. Its laser diode manufacturing facility in Shiroishi, Miyagi prefecture has some damage but the influence on its output is minimal, Sony added.
Via Reuters
