Nissan's COGENT Overview of Nissan Company

Nissan has been around for almost 90 years now, making it one of the oldest and leading manufacturers of vehicles in Japan. It was initially based in Japan alone but with passage of time, it went on and expanded itself to become a powerful worldwide company. Nissan Motor Company Ltd. gave the world Datsun as its first brand of cars which was highly successful making Nissan the third largest automobile company in Japan and 5th largest in the world. Nissan joined hands with French company Renault SA in 1999 to become an even bigger and more powerful force in the automobile industry. More production centers were created in the U.S., UK, Mexico and Spain.

Situation analysis

Nissan started a comprehensive supplier training program that is called NX96 and while this program was hailed for being the first of its kind, it has not always been very welcome by the supplier. There are some issues with suppliers who are working with this program as they are not sure what is expected of them and how the information provided during the training needs to be utilized. Suppliers are not exactly being as cooperative with the acceptance of this program as Nissan had hoped leading to some trust issues which Nissan wants to resolve. The poor performance of suppliers because of their attitude towards the program and Nissan itself is a threat to productivity which Nissan views as a serious concern. In order to tackle these problems, Nissan then started the NEXT21 which effectively replaced NX96. This program focused on giving suppliers tools to give 100% to Nissan while it permitted then a fault rate of 10 ppm. But this program has again failed to meet Nissan's expectations. Nissan had hoped that 1st tier suppliers would use this program and later help trickle it down to other tiers of suppliers but this did not happen as even the 1st tier did not fully accept the program and...

It was developed with the efforts of Nissan European Technology Center, Suppliers, and Canfield University. For this program funds were provided by DTI and Innovative Manufacturing Initiative (IMI) (the ENGINEER 2000). The COGENT was started after Nissan's NEXT21 program had failed to produce desired results. The most important objectives of this program include communication and understanding between suppliers and Nissan (Southey 2010). Company believes that it can use this program to effectively lower costs and improve efficiency which would help Nissan stay ahead of the competition. In order to survive and prosper the company needs this program to work. The main idea or concepts behind the development of COGENT include:
1. Early Supplier Involvement

This refers to the communication and involvement of suppliers at the first stage of manufacturing. This is an important step because if suppliers can offer input at the beginning stage of design, many problems can later be avoided in terms of what can be supplied and how much. This early supplier involvement is one of the main components of COGENT. Before actual designing or implementation starts, suppliers are asked to participate so that some production and product development mistakes can be avoided and also suppliers can tell which parts are available and which need to be developed. (Monczka and Trent 1995: 42)

2. Establishing long-term relationships

The second important part of the COGENT program is the creation of long-term relationships. With the idea of Nissan developing good relations with suppliers, it is possible to build lasting connections which are based on loyalty and respect.…