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Nissan North America set a sales record in May, with 114,457 deliveries.

That’s a 24.7 percent increase over May 2012. The global Nissan division also set a record, with 106,558 deliveries, up 31.2 percent over last year.

In North America, sales of the Altima, Pathfinder, Sentra and Rogue led the charge. The Altima and Sentra are made in Nissan’s Canton facility, which marked 10 years of production last month.

Altima sales totaled 31,940 for the month, a 40.8 percent jump from May 2012. Sentra sales (12,504 units) were up 64.5 percent.

“We are in the midst of launching five all-new, top-selling Nissan models in 15 months, and the effort is paying off,” Jose Munoz, senior vice president for sales and marketing at Nissan Americas, said in a company press release. “Altima, Pathfinder and Sentra, the first three of these launches, are up a combined 64.6 percent in May, which shows that our new products are hitting the sweet spot of delivering the innovation, style and value that buyers want.”

The Canton facility, using $100 million in bonds issued by the Madison County Economic Development Authority, is expanding its supplier park. Leases of the new buildings would pay the debt service. Lawmakers approved the bond package last legislative session.

Also on Monday, Toyota announced that its May sales were up 2.5 percent, with deliveries totaling 207,952.

“New vehicle sales are heating up along with the weather, and solid May results coupled with an excellent Memorial Day weekend provide great momentum as we move into the summer selling season,” said Bill Fay, group vice president and general manager of Toyota Division.

State auditor Stacey Pickering disputed Tuesday a union-funded study that said Nissan had not met its obligations to Mississippi.

Washington, D.C.-based Good Jobs First recently released the results of a study, paid for by the United Auto Workers, that said Nissan had violated the terms attached to its state incentives by denying workers the right to decide to unionize and by hiring large numbers of temporary workers. The study also claimed that Nissan’s incentives surpassed $1.3 billion, more than three times the reported figure when the plant opened in2003. Nissan and the Mississippi Development Authority disputed the study’s findings.

Pickering, in a column published Sunday in the Clarion-Ledger, said the state auditor’s office has verified Nissan’s job-count figures since the Canton plant opened, and found that they met and in most cases exceeded the threshold attached to the incentives.

“According to the law and the Memorandum of Understandings between Nissan and the state of Mississippi, Nissan was required to maintain 3,000 new direct jobs at the project site until 2021,” Pickering wrote. “As of our last audit in December, 2011, Nissan employed over 4,100 employees, far exceeding the mandated requirements.”

Mississippi Alliance for Fairness at Nissan, a group of clergy and elected officials, has led the efforts to unionize Canton workers. The organization claims Nissan has threatened to fire workers for doing so, which would violate federal labor laws. Nissan has repeatedly denied the accusations.

The Nissan facility was created under the Mississippi Major Economic Impact Act, the statute that allows oversight from the state auditor’s office. Pickering unsuccessfully pushed for legislation the last session that would have extended auditor oversight to all state-assisted economic development initiatives.

The legislation failed. Pickering told the Mississippi Business Journal in April he plans to push the legislation again in 2014.

The head of Nissan’s Canton facility is taking a new position within the company.

Dan Bednarzyk will be the vice president of what Nissan is calling Total Delivered Cost, effective May 13. It’s a newly created position.

Bednarzyk’s new role will be to oversee Nissan’s cost efficiency operations in North and South America. His job description will center on lowering overall manufacturing costs.

Bednarzyk has been in Canton since the facility started production in 2003. He’s been with Nissan since 1985. His new office will be in Franklin, Tenn, Nissan’s North American headquarters.

“Dan’s extensive experience in manufacturing and his successful leadership of the Nissan Canton Vehicle Assembly Plant will help him drive total delivered cost improvements across all our manufacturing operations,” Bill Krueger, senior vice president of manufacturing, purchasing, production engineering and supply chain management, said in a company press release announcing the change.

Bednarzyk’s replacement is David Aldana, who is currently head of Nissan’s manufacturing facility in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Like Bednaryzk, Aldana has been with the company since 1985, when he was named deputy general manager of the Nissan Civac plant in Cuernavaca, Mexiso. He has since held several manufacturing management position in Mexico and the U.S.

Nissan reported Tuesday that its April sales were up 23 percent over last year.

The company, which has a facility in Canton, sold 87,847 units for the month, up from 71,329 in April 2012.

A 24.6 percent sales jump in the Nissan division was spurred by the Altima (built in Canton), Pathfinder, Sentra (also built in Canton) and the Rogue compact SUV. Sales of the Altima in April were up 35 percent. Sentra sales jumped 44.9 percent.

“In the first quarter of 2013, we improved our retail sales by more than 4 percent while reducing deliveries to fleet customers by more than 17 percent,” said Jose Munoz, Nissan Americas senior vice president for sales and marketing. “We continued this trend in April with retail up 29 percent and fleet mix down over four percentage points from one year ago, which proves that our new products such as Altima, Sentra and Pathfinder are taking strong hold in the marketplace. We expect to have gained market share in April due to our strong retail performance, which we have full intention to continue through the summer months given the building momentum that we are seeing with Altima, Sentra and Pathfinder in particular.”

The news wasn’t as good for Toyota, which builds the compact Corolla sedan in Blue Springs.

Overall Toyota Motor Sales dipped 5 percent. The Toyota Division’s sales fell 5.4 percent over April 2012 on one more selling day.

It was the first month in several the automaker did not report monthly sales had risen year-over-year. March sales rose 4.8 percent. February sales were up 8.7 percent; January sales increased 21 percent.

“From an industry standpoint, continued retail sales growth indicates the underlying strength of the market, which is a great sign for the months ahead, especially with new products, low interest rates and plenty of pent up demand,” said Bill Fay, group vice president and general manager of Toyota Division.  “Toyota’s two newest models – Avalon and RAV4 – continued to attract customers with double digit gains in April.”

An automotive industry website published Monday highlights of a wide-ranging interview with a Nissan executive, and the Canton plant was a big part of it.

Colin Dodge, Nissan Americas chairman, said the company is preparing to turn Canton into the international export hub for the next-generation Murano, a small SUV that has become one of Nissan’s more popular models.

To do that, Dodge told autonews.com, Nissan has to move past a series of manufacturing issues that plagued it last year.

“We had some confusion in manufacturing that disturbed our plan, and it wasn’t insignificant,” he said. “I won’t say that everything that could go wrong went wrong, but we had challenges.”

Dodge said the troubles left Canton 15 percent short of its production goals. The facility turned out 233,441 vehicles in 2012, according to Nissan figures.

The issues started when Nissan started producing the Altima midsize sedan in two plants; started making the Infiniti JX; a next-generation Pathfinder; electric Leaf and battery modules in Smyrna, Tenn.; and moved production of the Xterra SUV and Frontier pickup to Canton. The company also increased shifts in two U.S facilities and hired more than 4,000 additional workers to fill them.

Dodge admits the ramp-up “overwhelmed” the company. “I never tried to do something as difficult as that before, and I probably never will again.” Dodge said the company has solved the problems.

During the legislative session that just ended, lawmakers approved $100 million in bonds that will be publicly issued but whose note will be paid by Nissan. It’s believed the bonds will be used for an expansion of Nissan Canton’s supplier park.

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Toyota and Nissan were among automotive manufacturers to issue a huge recall of vehicles Thursday for potentially faulty passenger-side airbag systems.

The airbags were made by Takata Corp. in Japan. The carmakers said the systems were assembled with improperly manufactured wafers that could cause the airbags to deploy abnormally in the event of a crash. As many as 3 million vehicles in North America and Japan could fall under the recall.

The Toyota vehicles recalled include the Corolla, but only models made from 2001-2003, well before the company’s plant in Blue Springs started producing the compact sedan in November 2011.

The Nissan recalls include vehicles made from 2001-2003 in Japan, a spokesperson said in an email Thursday morning to the Mississippi Business Journal. Canton’s Nissan facility opened in May 2003.

The recall also affected Honda vehicles. The manufacturers will notify owners within 30 days if their vehicle qualifies for a front passenger airbag inflator replacement. Replacement will be free.

“Nissan is committed to a high level of customer safety, service and satisfaction and is working with its dealers to promptly address this issue,” the company said in a press release.

Toyota-related information can be found at www.toyota.com/recall and www.lexus.com/recall or by calling 1 800-331-4331 (Toyota) and 1 800-255-3987 (Lexus).

The Senate passed with little debate Wednesday a bill that would authorize the Madison County Economic Development Authority to issue up to $100 million in bonds for an expansion of the Nissan plant in Canton.

The bonds would not be general obligation, but would be classified as revenue-only. Nissan would service the bonds via lease payments for the buildings. Neither the state nor Madison County would be on the hook should that fail to happen, said Sen. Will Longwitz, R-Madison, the bill’s principal author.

Longwitz said on the floor of the Senate last week that the bonds would pay for three buildings for suppliers related to an upcoming expansion at Nissan, the details of which Mississippi Development Authority and legislative officials would not share. Longwitz said the project would create several hundred jobs.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously, but not before an amendment that would set a time limit for the bonds to be issued. Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, proposed the amendment that would give the MCEDA until March 31, 2014, to issue the bonds.

The bill now goes to the House.

Bills that employed standard general obligation financing have not fared well since the beginning of the 2012 legislative session. Last year was the first session in several that lawmakers did not pass a general bond bill for things like infrastructure projects and upgrades to state buildings. Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who could not come to terms with House leadership last year on a bond bill, has said several times he’ll support one this year that is “reasonable and rational in size.”

Bryan, who generally leads the charge in scrutinizing incentives the state offers to new and existing businesses, said the Nissan bill’s use of revenue-only bonds that held the state harmless is something that “folks are generally comfortable with.”

This is the fourth consecutive year Nissan has unveiled some kind of expansion in Canton. In 2010 the company announced it was starting production of commercial vans at the facility. In 2011, news broke of the Xterra SUV and Frontier pickup’s lines moving to Canton from the company’s plant in Smyrna, Tann. Last summer, Nissan announced it would start making the Sentra compact sedan in Canton. All told, the three expansions have represented an investment of more than $200 million and have pushed Nissan’s total employment figures to more than 5,000.

The August jobs report issued Friday morning was mostly met with disappointment, but there was some good news at Canton’s Nissan plant.

The company is looking for maintenance technicians. Candidates with a minimum of five years industrial tech experience are invited to go online to create a profile and submit a resume. Nissan will then select applicants for a round of in-person interviews.

Nissan recently announced that its Canton facility would add the Sentra compact sedan, the Xterra SUV and the Frontier compact truck to its production line. The company will still make the full-size Titan truck, Armada SUV and the mid-size Altima sedan in Canton. New hires to produce the expanded lineup will create a total of 1,000 new jobs, officials announced in June. Total employment at the facility is expected to reach 4,500.

With those additions, total employment at the facility, which opened in 2003, is expected to reach 4,500. To compare, the Toyota plant in Blue Springs employs a little more than 2,000 people directly, but it only produces one vehicle – the Corolla compact sedan.

To apply for a maintenance tech position at Nissan, go here.

Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems Extension recently won a 2012 Innovator Award from the Southern Growth Policies Board.

CAVS, which is based in Canton and was created about a decade ago to work with Nissan, was specifically cited for its “Enhancing On-the-Job Problem Solving” training program. The award is given to programs and initiatives “that are improving the economy and quality of life in the South,” according to SGPB.

The problem solving program was funded by a $660,000 federal stimulus grant administered by the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. The MDES and the Mississippi Development Authority shared oversight of the program.

According to a MSU press release, 60 percent of the 400 Nissan workers who completed the 15-month project have received a pay raise. The program also provided training for Nissan’s suppliers and other partners.

CAVS Extension is affiliated with the Engagement and Outreach Service at MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering, which developed and delivered the training program with CAVS Extension and Holmes Community College, whose primary service area includes central Mississippi.

An analysis conducted after the program began revealed that 5.8 percent of Mississippi’s automotive workers had higher-order skills — short of the 10.5 percent national average. To help close the gap, the program provided instruction with a three-pronged curriculum: instrumentation and diagnostics, problem-solving methodologies and teaming topics.

Researchers and faculty  with the Bagley College of Engineering trained students to use specialized data-gathering equipment and analysis software. CAVS Extension provided specialized problem-solving training and spawned projects designed to solve chronic problems from students’ companies.

Holmes Community College provided training aimed at improving students’ communication, leadership and collaboration skills.

There will be a ceremony next Thursday, June 28, at the Nissan plant in Canton to celebrate a few of the facility’s recent achievements.

A press release says state, local and company officials will gather with Nissan employees to mark the company’s “growth strategy to expand production and job creation in Mississippi.” The plant started producing the 2013 Altima June 7. This fall, the Frontier midsize pickup and the Xterra SUV will shift production to Canton, from the company’s Smyrna, Tenn., plant. The Titan truck and Armada SUV have been made at the plant since it came online in 2003. Production of the NV commercial vehicle started a couple years ago.

Overall, the plant has the capacity to make more than 400,000 vehicles per year, and employs over 3,300 people.

The release also says that Nissan and political officials will review what the two entities are doing to expand manufacturing in Mississippi and beyond. The plant, which employs 3,300 people, was Mississippi’s first automotive plant. Toyota became the second last November.