By John Byczkowski
Enquirer staff writer

 

Gov. Bob Taft, left, and Honda of America President and CEO Koki Hirashima at the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio in 2002. (Enquirer file)

There was a sign greeting Koki Hirashima, CEO of Honda America Manufacturing, when he arrived at the Hilton Netherland hotel downtown Thursday.

The sign, however, was there to welcome a board meeting of his competitor, Toyota. "If you're here for the Toyota board meeting," he told about 200 Rotarians who came to hear his lunchtime talk, "the meeting is downstairs."

Honda has been in Ohio 25 years, and Cincinnati's connection to Honda goes back even further. Hirashima told the crowd that company founder Soichiro Honda came to Cincinnati in 1953, looking to buy the precision machine tools needed to improve his motorcycles. Those machine tools not only helped build high-precision engines that gave Honda a worldwide reputation, but also helped create Honda Engineering, the basis for the company's industry-leading manufacturing operations.

"So, even then, Honda and Ohio - and especially Honda and Cincinnati - found a way to work together," he said. He later told how he asked Soichiro Honda why the company set up shop in Ohio. Honda answered, "God guided us to Ohio."

Since Honda's first Ohio-built motorcycle rolled off the assembly line in Marysville in 1979, the company's operations in the state have grown to five plants with 13,300 workers, along with other operations that employ about 3,000 more. Honda's move to begin producing cars in the United States forced other overseas carmakers to do the same - including Toyota, which opened a plant in Georgetown, Ky. in 1988.

Though Honda continues to add jobs, Ohio's manufacturing sector has lost 208,000 jobs in four years. Why? "Very difficult question," Hirashima said. Honda does $7 billion in business with 175 suppliers in Ohio, and today "some of them maybe struggle with how to maintain their operation."

He said Honda regards its suppliers as partners, so Honda "associates" have been sent to help suppliers remain competitive. A big problem for automakers and parts suppliers has been the rising cost of steel. He said Honda is working with suppliers to help reduce costs there.

While Honda is doing what it can to help its suppliers, is there anything the state can do to help manufacturers?

"Please ask the governor," Hirashima said.

E-mail johnb@enquirer.com