Watch: We go inside one of Mazda's largest car factories

Monday, 27 February 2023

An up-close look at Mazda's recently updated Hofu Plant, which produces its all-new CX-60, CX-90, and more.

I’m sure most of us think of Mazda as being something of a motoring industry juggernaut – a commercial giant, with a name recognised by every household in the country.

Whilst the Japanese marque struggled a little for sales locally in 2022, it remained the second largest seller with our friends over the ditch.

Mazdas have always had a presence in my life. My parents’ first family car was a 1988 Mazda 323, and I learnt to drive in a 2001 Mazda Demio. The one designed with a set square, you know the one.

Side skirts, engine covers, and side-window seals are amongst the last parts fitted to Mazda’s cars.

I say this because it’s interesting walking through the reception area at Mazda’s Hofu Plant; one of the brand’s largest car manufacturing sites from its homeland.

The Hofu Plant is a building full of charm and passion.

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Mazda’s ‘rootless’ production line system means no fixed conveyor belts and no hangars.

Once you’ve passed through the main foyer, past the glass and flashy displays, you stumble upon a shared space that looks like a charming time capsule from the 1980s and 1990s – like a backdrop for an episode of Stranger Things. It’s humble, maybe by design.

On the stairs to its leading conference room proudly sits a hand painted picture of its Le Mans–winning 787B above a series of framed certificates, some hung slightly crooked. For someone who grew up thinking of Mazda as a juggernaut, it might seem a bit of a shock.

One of the many AGVs roaming the factory, using lines painted on the floor to get to its destination.

Based some 120km away from the centre of Hiroshima in Hofu – a city with a population of around 120,000 – Mazda’s Hofu Plant has been in operation since 1982. It can produce up to 400,000 vehicles a year, and is currently home to some of the brand’s most popular models.

It’s clear that the locals are on board, too. Just about every third car you spot on the roads is a Mazda of some kind.

It is remarkable watching a Mazda worker jump from working on one nameplate one moment to working on another the next.

The Hofu Plant is composed of two sub-plants; the H1 plant and the H2 plant. The former produces the company’s compacts (Mazda2, Mazda3, and CX-3), while the latter produces the Mazda6, CX-5, CX-60, and CX-90.

It’s those latter two models that will soon become particularly important for Mazda. They represent the first two models to roll off the production that are based on the company’s ‘Large Product Group’ architecture – a new platform that Mazda hopes will elevate its market positioning closer to the likes of Lexus, Audi, and BMW.

Keep an eye out for our full first drive thoughts on the CX-60, dropping later this week.

Stuff travelled with Mazda to Japan last week to drive the CX-60 for the first time, catching an eye-opening look at the company’s Hiroshima and Hofu plants while we were there. While pictures were off limits at Hiroshima, the Mazda team allowed us to take plenty of snaps at Hofu.

Because of its selection as the home of Large Product Group production, the Hofu Plant recently benefited from a renovation. Instead of spending the money on niceties, Mazda expanded its production line, made vehicle lifts stronger, added a new line in the welding shop, and consolidated the brand’s focus on what it calls ‘monotsukuri’.

Monotsukuri is the Japanese term for ‘the art of making things’ – a term that Mazda applies to all layers of car development, from paper and pencil to the Hofu Plant production floor.

Each car is constantly moving incrementally, meaning all engineers must be quick and on top of their game.

The Mazda6 and Mazda2, two excellent models that are overshadowed in New Zealand by crossovers.

Couldn’t fit that in your carry-on luggage.

Mazda6 wagons and sedans sitting next to each other briefly.

A rare two-door Mazda 626 sits in the Hafu Plant lobby, as one of its first ever creations.

One of the first observations our troop of media personnel noticed at Hofu was the lack of autonomous robot arms, a generally accepted staple of car manufacturing. At Hofu, human hands manage most of the primary assembly line work. The only robot arm we saw in action was applying sealant to front and rear windscreens.

The bulk of the production line work is done by Mazda’s ‘takumi’ master craftsmen and craftswomen. Each has their own set of jobs that they do repeatedly throughout the day for different models.

Incredibly, cars roll into the workstation in a seemingly random order. One minute, they’ll be working on a left-hand drive front-wheel drive CX-30, the next a right-hook all-wheel drive CX-80, then a Mazda6.

Workers on the floor are aided by robots of a different kind. They’re called AGVs, or autonomous guided vehicles. Coming in all shapes, sizes, and purposes, these driverless machines roam the factory floor constantly. Some are just there to lug components from point to point, while others function as work tables and hoists.

In the case of the latter, each vehicle gets its drivetrain and suspension set-up installed with the help of AGVs. They sit and wait patiently in a queue for their car to come, before rolling into action when they arrive, lifting the hefty hardware up to allow engineers on the floor to bolt it into place.

There’s even a delightful looking AGV based on a golf cart doing loops on the roads surrounding the Hofu Plant, and it appears to be painted in Soul Red.

Although these AGVs do a lot of heavy lifting (literally. Mazda says 80% of its internal transporting is done via AGV), that doesn’t mean Mazda’s workforce has been depleted. In fact, the company says its workforce at Hofu has increased recently thanks to an increased focus on EVs.

Bodyshells travel around the plant via a unique “rootless” dolly line system. No fixed conveyor belts and no hangars.

Cars never stop in one spot – instead slowly floating through each of the 243 workstations on site. Workers perform their tasks quickly while each car is in motion, some lobbing parts into the cabin of each car for the next person down the line.

It’s also clever planning. The rootless production system allows Mazda to be more fluid and agile with how it makes cars. This is a trait that will have been especially handy during the Covid-19 pandemic and way supply shortages fragmented car production worldwide.

All of this exemplifies monotsukuri, with Mazda choosing to forgo autonomous tech and defy convention to make its own cars in its own way.

Bonus images