OREANDA-NEWS. Mitsubishi Motors Corporation Japan (MMC) has been concentrated upon Thailand, via Mitsubishi Motors Thailand Co., Ltd., as the key market and operation for ASEAN group, based on the new mid-term business plan named ‘New-Stage 2016’ and one significant activity is to strengthen the Research & Development function by establishing the testing course in Thailand.

MMC had announced its policy to strengthen Research & Development function in Thailand since beginning of FY 2013. R&D in Thailand has following three pillars; first pillar is to further improve quality of vehicles produced in Thailand by swiftly reflecting the needs of local markets. Second pillar is to take a wider scope of roles in minor changes of the models produced in Thailand by improving the level of local procurement.  And the third pillar is to investigate the market trend and technology in ASEAN market with many facilities including testing course.

Mitsubishi Motors’ new testing course locates in Nhongkham Amphur, Chonburi (eastern of Thailand). The site is around 95 Rais consist of test course area and office building area. This project has already got approval for investment promotional privileges from The Board of Investment of Thailand (BOI).       It will be the 3rd Mitsubishi Motors testing course and the first one outside Japan. This course is supposed to support the new development of Mitsubishi Motors product and to evaluate the quality level of production trial vehicle and quality investigation for MMTh product. The testing course construction will be finished by first quarter of 2015.

The organizational reinforcement also lead to partial transfer of the R&D function from MMC to MMTh, therefore the total number of Thai staffs and Japanese expats working for R&D division has been planned to increase as well. At present time, there are about 50 members and it is going to be totally more than 100 persons in the next year plan. The policy to strengthen R&D in Thailand shows the high level confident which MMC gives to MMTh and Thai engineering team. This is the first R&D branch in ASEAN.