East Liberty Auto Plant

East Liberty Auto Plant is a Honda automobile factory in East Liberty, Ohio, United States. The assembly plant opened in 1989. East Liberty is about 45 minutes northwest of Columbus, Ohio.

The Honda East Liberty Auto Plant as seen from Ohio State Route 347.

It was the first plant in North America to implement Honda’s 'New Manufacturing System' in 2000.^[1] Today, the plant produces the Honda CR-V and the Acura RDX and MDX. The East Liberty Auto Plant was the first plant on the continent to employ low-emission, water-borne paint and the first to use laser welding in mass production.^[2]

Location: East Liberty, Ohio
Started production: December 1989
Plant size: 1.9 million square feet
Capital investment: US$1.1 billion
Associates: 2,800 ^[3]
Produces:
- Honda CR-V (from September 2006-present)
- Acura RDX (from March 2012-present)
- Acura MDX (from May 2017-present)
Annual production capacity: 240,000 cars and light trucks
Operations:
- Stamping
- Welding
- Painting
- Testing
- Plastics injection molding
- Assembly and sub-assembly
- Quality assurance
- Shipping & export
Additional parts produced:
- Stamped parts exported to Honda of Canada Mfg. for Civic production

The East Liberty plant became the lead plant in global production of the CR-V in 2016.^[4] Engineers working in the plant are responsible for providing the first set of hard-tooled parts and complete body unit builds for nine other CR-V plants around the world to follow and replicate. The team have to perfect the parts and manufacturing processes. The plant's 200,000-square-foot welding shop was expanded and underwent a makeover with 200 new robots. The plant began to produce the 2017 CR-V in November 2016. The East Liberty plant exports vehicles to many countries including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Russia.^[4].The plant has around 2,800 employees. ^[5]