Best Practice Visit - Nissan Sunderland

Go behind the scenes at Nissan, Sunderland - one of the UK's largest car manufacturers. In 1986 the first Nissan Bluebird rolled off the production; fast-forward 37 years, and the Site is driving forward the Nissan EV36Zero, a £ 1 billion project to create the world's first EV manufacturing ecosystem.

Over 6,000 employees are based at Nissan, Sunderland, across a 362,000m2 site of world-leading manufacturing excellence. The Site is also home to solar and wind farms, a vehicle test track and facilities like its advanced sports and medical centre.

In 2016, the Site was responsible for 507,000 of the 1.73 million cars that rolled off UK production lines. One in every three new cars built in the UK comes from Sunderland Plant.

Delegates attending the visit will gain exclusive insight into the best-in-class manufacturing practices adopted by Nissan. The visit will be hosted by members of the Nissan team who discuss the process and challenges they faced along the journey to becoming a centre of excellence.

The visit is ideal for companies in the early stages of their lean journey or who wish to understand better what operational excellence looks like in practice. It provides valuable lessons on leading lean improvement programmes and fostering a continuous improvement culture.

Key Information about the Visit

• The visit will start at 08:45 and finish around 16:00
• Location: Nissan Motor Manufacturing, Washington Road, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear SR5 3NS
• Refreshments and Lunch will be provided
• All PPE will be provided. Arms and legs are to be covered, and sandals/open-toed shoes/high heels are not allowed.
• People fitted with pacemakers/insulin pumps will not be permitted in the body shop due to the strong magnetic fields.

Itinerary for the day

• 08:45/09:00 – The day will start with a meet and greet, where we will understand the specific areas of Nissan that guests would like to learn about e.g. standard operations/5s/Continuous Improvement
• 09:00-10:00 – A deeper dive into areas the guests would like to learn more about
• 10:00-12:00 – Plastic, Press and Body Shop visit
• 12:00-12:40 – Lunch
• 12:40 – 13:15 – Q&A following the morning's visit
• 13:15 – 15:00 – Visit to T&C 1 or 2, including TQM discussion on the shop-floor
• 15:00 – 16:00 – Q&A and final round-up of the day