Toyota Motor Corp. is resuming plans to run its North American auto plants overtime next week as the automaker rebounds from parts shortages triggered by flooding in Thailand.
Workers at Toyota plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico will work additional hours starting Nov. 14, and Toyota's vehicle factories in Indiana and Ontario will also work on Saturday, Nov. 19, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
"We're getting back to that higher-than-normal production rate we'd been planning on," Mike Goss, a spokesman for Toyota's production unit in Erlanger, Kentucky, said. "It's all about the availability of parts. It remains a very dynamic situation."
Thailand's floods disrupted plans by both Toyota and Honda Motor Co. to orchestrate a production rebound in the final months of the year after Japan's massive earthquake and tsunami limited global output for five months.
Before the floods, which cut supplies of electronics, plastic and rubber components, Toyota had said it would run North American plants at least 15 percent above a target it set at the start of 2011, prior to the quake.
Toyota also said Wednesday it will resume vehicle production in Thailand on Nov. 21.
Honda on Wednesday said that six plants in the U.S. and Canada are running at 50 percent to 75 percent of planned output, exceeding the 50 percent rate it expected as of Oct. 31.
Honda is getting more parts from both alternative sources and original suppliers and "can confidently say we don't have to do 50 percent much longer," Ed Miller, a Honda spokesman, said Wednesday.