DaimlerChrysler Shareholders Approve Renaming Daimler AG
Shareholders of DaimlerChrysler AG have approved the renaming of the company to Daimler AG. As part of the name change, the company’s production plants and sales organizations in Germany and abroad will also be renamed. The company will be called Daimler wherever several product brands are produced or sold, or where the focus is on the group as a whole. Plants and sales organizations that exclusively or primarily produce or sell a single product brand will be named after the respective product brand.
ArvinMeritor Names Rakesh Sachdev President of Asia Pacific
TROY, MI — Rakesh Sachdev has been named president of Asia Pacific for ArvinMeritor, effective immediately. Sachdev will report directly to ArvinMeritor’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, Charles "Chip" McClure. "Rakesh has been a long-standing and integral member of ArvinMeritor’s executive management team with extensive experience in several areas including, operations, finance, strategy, and
Bush, Auto Execs to Keep Talking: President Shows Big 3 Sympathy
From Detroit Free Press WASHINGTON — After eight months of missed dates, mounting political pressure and a change in congressional control, just what did Detroit automakers get from their meeting Tuesday with President George W. Bush? A promise for more meetings. While they didn’t agree on every issue, especially on Japan’s currency, the executives said
Bush Meets with U.S. Automakers Today
Detroit-based auto industry leaders are meeting with President Bush to press their concerns about health care and trade issues, while making clear that the troubled industry does not want a federal bailout. General Motors Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally and Tom LaSorda, president and chief executive officer of DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group, are sitting down with Bush today after months of scheduling conflicts and delays.
Wave of Retiring Japanese Workers Could Force Big Changes
No one knows spindles like Katsuya Hyodo. For more than three decades, the diminutive factory worker, armed with only a junior high school education, has studied and designed the whirring cylinders at the heart of automotive machine tools. “I like spindles,” Hyodo says. “There are so many different kinds.” His expertise and passion are priceless to a small company like his employer, machine tool manufacturer Nishijimax (annual revenue: $30 million). Just one problem: Katsuya is 72 years old. That’s why he spends Sunday afternoons at home transcribing everything he knows about spindles into his computer. He wants to make sure his wisdom reaches the next generation. “I am not just doing it for myself,” he says.
Multilingual Workplaces Create Safety Concerns
In an era in which West Michigan manufacturers are facing systemic changes, they are also, with increasing regularity, being asked to absorb a cross-cultural work force in a safe and productive manner. Between 1999 and 2000, automotive supplier Behr Industries Corp. welcomed roughly 40 Bosnian refugees into a 600 employee cultural melting pot that already contained Hispanic, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants.
Sunnen’s Jimmy Moss Loses Cancer Battle
Jimmy Moss, the popular Sunnen salesman in North Carolina and South Carolina, died Feb. 6, after a six-month battle with cancer. Moss, 59, was with Sunnen for more than 21 years and was well-known throughout the engine building industry.
Ray Fink Named New PERA President
Ray Fink was recently selected by the Production Engine Remanufacturers Association (PERA) Board of Directors to complete the term of Mark Spaulding as president of PERA. Fink previously served as PERA president in 1992. Fink is currently the president of AER Manufacturing in Carrollton, TX, and has been with the company since 1979. He semi-retired from the day-to-day management duties of AER in May 2004, but remains president and continues to serve on AER’s board of directors.
ArvinMeritor Forms Korean Emissions Joint Venture
ArvinMeritor, Inc. announced the formation of a 50-50 joint venture between its Light Vehicle Systems (LVS) business group and DongWon Precision Industrial Co., Ltd. The joint venture, named AD Tech Co., Ltd., will initially supply diesel particulate filters to light vehicle manufacturers in Korea facing stringent diesel emissions reduction legislation. It will also produce related exhaust system components.
Troubled Supplier Finally Has a Suitor
Plastech Engineered Products Inc., a growing plastics auto parts maker from Dearborn,MI is expected to launch a bid in bankruptcy court this week for rival Collins & Aikman Corp., a company roughly four times the size of Plastech.