(March 29, 2011) The shortage of parts is putting a stranglehold on the Japanese auto industry as it struggles to recover from the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 11.

Reports coming out of Japan from the Big Three — Toyota, Nissan and Honda — as well as other automakers have been dire this week.

The optimism expressed shortly after the disaster that things would quickly get back to normal has turned into one pronouncement after another that the lack of automotive parts from dozens of plants struggling to reopen has forced assembly line slowdowns, and in some cases complete shutdowns.

Honda announced today that it will slash daily output at its U.S. assembly plants by as much as 50 percent starting Wednesday, as the supply of parts coming from Japanese suppliers dwindles.

Although Honda has a high percentage of North American-supplied content in its vehicles, the cuts in output are evidence that the shortage of a single part can cripple a factory. Honda disclosed the plans in memos to employees and suppliers today.

At Toyota, a lack of spare parts coming from suppliers has started to affect U.S. Toyota and Lexus dealerships. A memo sent Friday from Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. to its dealers said that, although the vast majority of spare parts operations were running after a four-day shutdown, “damage sustained by certain parts suppliers will interrupt their normal production.”

Initially, that will result in a shortage of 233 parts numbers for at least 30 days, Toyota confirmed. In the memo to dealers, Toyota said both the number of parts affected, and the length of interruption “may increase.”

Other companies, including Mazda and Nissan continued production at low levels this week, assembling cars with the parts that remained in stock. But production may grind to a halt as parts become even more scarce.

Suzuki announced that it is scheduling more downtime. Vehicle assembly at Suzuki's Sagara plant, which makes the Kizashi sedan and SX4 for North America, is expected to be offline through Thursday. After that is still undecided.

Subaru, in the meantime, announced plans to resume minimal vehicle production after two weeks of closed plants.

The slowdowns and shutdowns are leading to dwindling inventories at U.S. dealerships as vehicles that are sold are not be immediately replaced.

Source: media reports