Tokyo, March 18 (BNA): Japanese manufacturers have begun to resume production at some plants in the earthquake-hit northeast, but Toyota Motor Co. said it plans to stop work on 18 assembly lines for a few days next week due to a shortage of spare parts. Suppliers.
On the one hand, the limited damage from the 7.4-magnitude earthquake highlighted Japan’s success in building resilience to the frequent earthquakes that rock the archipelago, according to Reuters.
But the quake has raised fears of further disruptions to the pandemic-hit global supply chain of critical components for electronics and automobile production, in which Japanese manufacturers are playing a leading role.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker by sales, said it would stop operating 18 lines at 11 domestic plants, mostly for three days.
Operations at three plants were halted due to the earthquake and saw production losses of 20,000 units due to the shutdown. Toyota has already lowered its global production target due to the ongoing shortage of chips.
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., the world’s largest supplier of ceramic capacitors used in smartphones and cars, said it would resume production on Friday at two of its four suspended factories.
The other two companies are still out of business, a spokesperson for the Kyoto-based company said, noting that the fire that broke out in a factory producing chip inductors caused some damage to the equipment.
The company, which has production facilities in Malaysia, said it was shipping from its stockpile.
Energy was mostly restored across the northeast, which suffered the largest earthquake in Japan 11 years ago.
Power was cut off to parts of Tokyo for nearly three hours after the latest earthquake, which killed three people and injured 183.
The Yomiuri newspaper reports that a power outage has forced the disposal of some COVID-19 vaccines kept in cold storages.
A spokesman for Sony Group Corp. (6758.T) said the technology giant is in the process of gradually resuming production at three plants in the earthquake-hit region.
Sony said there was some damage to a facility in Shiroshi, Miyagi Prefecture that produces laser diodes, but the impact on production is limited.
Renesas Electronics Corp., which makes nearly a third of microcontroller chips used in cars globally, said layoffs at two plants and partial stops at a third remain.
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