Toyota Motor Corp. will set up a new in-house school in the disaster-hit Tohoku region that will train junior high school graduates in the basics of manufacturing before hiring them, sources said.
Toyota Motor Corp. will set up a new in-house school in the disaster-hit Tohoku region that will train junior high school graduates in the basics of manufacturing before hiring them, sources said.
The carmaker's second such training school will emulate the Toyota Technical Skills Academy in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, which dates back to 1938, according to the sources.
Toyota intends to provide solid employment and step up efforts to train human resources in the Tohoku region, which the company sees as its third main manufacturing area following the Tokai and Kyushu regions.
The automaker's subsidiaries in the region--Kanto Auto Works Ltd., Central Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Tohoku Corp.--have main plants either in Iwate or Miyagi prefectures, which means the school most likely will be located in one of the two prefectures.
Sources said many of young people in Tohoku hope to find jobs in or near their hometowns to support their families.
Toyota Technical Skills Academy, established under professional skill development laws, has about 400 students. It offers three-year high school diploma programs for junior high school graduates and one-year technical programs for high school graduates.
Students at the school learn the corporation's philosophies and manufacturing methods, in addition to English and engineering. The academy has about 17,000 alumni, and of the graduates, about 8,000 people work at Toyota inside and outside Japan.