Honda reshapes U.S. operations for speed

LOS ANGELES — Honda is getting back to its leaner-operating roots by consolidating U.S. manufacturing oversight into a single unit and creating regional field manager positions that will better respond to dealer needs, the company's sales chief told Automotive News.

The hoped-for result, said Dave Gardner, general manager of sales at American Honda Motor Co., will be the ability to get new and redesigned vehicles to market faster and take care of retailers who have specific local needs on products and marketing.

"We're setting up the company for the future, to make sure we go back to our Honda roots, focusing on things like speed, simplicity, agility, flexibility that are all long-term traditional Honda DNA," Gardner said. He took over U.S. sales, marketing, service and parts in May after being CEO of Honda Canada.

"Coming out of the pandemic, the way people are buying products, the way people are interacting with dealers — I think everything needed to be put on the table," he said.

"Our objective here is to try to make sure we become leaner, less bureaucratic, less risk-averse and not afraid to try new things."

Restructuring Honda's sprawling U.S. manufacturing operations will be a big undertaking.

Honda said this month that it will combine its U.S. auto manufacturing operations "related to frame, engine, transmission and related purchasing operations into a new company" called Honda Development and Manufacturing of America. Honda R&D Americas is included in the merger, effective April 1.

"Each change is vital to our ongoing effort to make Honda in America stronger and more responsive to the customer, better able to invest in advanced technology and prepared to meet future market needs," Shinji Aoyama, chief of North American operations and CEO of American Honda, said in a press release.

Included in the consolidation are several Honda auto companies, including Honda of America Manufacturing, Honda Transmission Manufacturing of America, Honda Accessory America, Honda Precision Parts of Georgia and assembly plants in Alabama and Indiana, Honda said. The new unit, HDMA for short, will be based in Marysville, Ohio, where Honda has extensive manufacturing operations.

Separate but related is the reorganization of the sales, service and parts units overseen directly by Gardner.

Beginning in January, Honda will have four new regional manager positions that will become the links between the company's national and field operations to speed up decision-making.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a move toward online retailing by several years, and Gardner said Honda needs to get out in front of it quickly.

That means a greater focus on local dealer needs, such as marketing programs, and having the right inventory of cars and light trucks on the ground.

"We can't afford anymore to have a dealer talk to a field rep, who talks to an assistant manager, who talks to his own manager, and then that gets kicked around here among a whole bunch of layers before we get a response back," Gardner said. "We want our people in the field to be much more empowered."

The reorganization is not about reducing jobs at Honda, Gardner said, but the company is taking advantage of normal attrition rates.

"We are at a stage in our history as a company where we have had a number of associates retire in the recent past and ongoing, so we're certainly using that opportunity to look at what we're doing," he said.

The number of Honda field representatives that call on dealers is not being reduced, he specified. The creation of the four regional manager positions is designed to better serve local markets for the 1,000 Honda dealers and nearly 300 Acura dealers.

"The differences in the markets are quite distinct," Gardner said. "And historically, we kind of viewed all the markets the same. By going to a structure where we put four regional managers in place, we want to look at the business regionally. We don't want to just say one size fits all."