Perodua-Daihatsu good synergy, new SUV may come

Zainal: Our vendor capability has improved and more than 40% of them can design parts for the cars.

AT one of Daihatsu’s most advanced factories, a car rolls off the production line every 1.1 minutes.

The assembly line moves at a slow, constant speed from the time metal parts are stamped by robots to when the vehicles are checked for defects just before they wait in line to be shipped to other parts of Japan.

At the plant where 1,700 people work in synchrony to finish the cars, there is a chart on the wall that showed Daihatsu’s evolution as a carmaker. Visitors can see how the company started off as a maker of light commercial vehicles with its first passenger car being the Mira in the mid 1980s.