As a plant foreman, manager and vice president for Toyota in both Kentucky and Texas, Don Jackson helped start up three production plants for Japan's No. 1 car maker.
Last fall, the 53-year-old industrial engineer got a call to help start another. But unlike his work for Toyota in Georgetown, Ky., and San Antonio, Texas, the newest venture for Mr. Jackson involves another foreign-based auto maker, Volkswagen.
After 21 years of helping build Toyota into what was the world’s biggest car maker so far this year, Mr. Jackson agreed last fall to come to Chattanooga and work on Volkswagen’s plans for a $1 billion auto assembly plant — the first for the German auto maker since it closed an unsuccessful American plant two decades ago in Pennsylvania.
“I’ve been very fortunate in my career to get in on the ground floor of some exciting projects that have created thousands of jobs,” he said. “The chance to start another plant and create thousand of more jobs was just too great not to jump at.”
Mr. Jackson said leaving Toyota after more than two decades “was probably one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make.
“But I started to do a lot of research about Volkswagen and a friend of mine had a Volkswagen Touareg so I took it around the block and I said, ‘Wow, this is a nice product that is fun to drive and has passion.’ So I decided, why not?”
Personal glance
Name: Don Jackson
Title: President, Volkswagen Manufacturing USA
Age: 53
Career: He joined Volkswagen in September after 21 years with Toyota Motor Manufacturing after previously working for Hoover Group and Clark Equipment Fork Lift Manufacturing. He worked at Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., plant in the plant's quality department where he rose to become a vice president by 2001. He later was vice president of Toyota's plant in San Antonio, Texas.
Education: Graduate of Eastern Kentucky University
Community involvement: He served as a board member of the Associated Industries of Kentucky and the Lexington Community Foundation
Personal: He and his wife recently bought a house in Ooltewah
Mr. Jackson said he has quickly learned that VW “can build an environmentally safer vehicle that is a lot of fun to drive.” Despite some initial misgivings by his wife — “she thought I was crazy” — Mr. Jackson said he is delighted he made the career move in 2008.
Mr. Jackson’s boss, Frank Fischer, chief executive of VW’s Chattanooga operations, jokes that his first major hire got tired of Japanese rice and wanted to get more German sausage.
"His experience in starting operations in Kentucky and Texas will prove invaluable to the startup of our facility,” Mr. Fischer said.
Mr. Fischer and Mr. Jackson didn’t know each other until October. But the two are now leading the effort to build what will be Chattanooga’s biggest manufacturing plant with 2,000 employees producing at least 150,000 vehicles a year.
Mr. Jackson said he is building on his experiences at Toyota and expects the new Volkswagen plant to be a global model for the automotive industry.
“We’ve been requested to make this the benchmark for Volkswagen,” he said. “Each plant I have been involved with is better than the one before and I’m confident this will be the best ever.”
As the first solely owned U.S. plant for VW in two decades, Volkswagen is having to put together a supplier network and build much of its U.S. presence.
“It’s very similar to what we did in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1987,” Mr. Jackson said. “I got to work on helping to bring production of a strong Japanese company to America in the past and now I get to help bring a very strong German company’s production to the U.S. That’s very exciting.”
Mr. Jackson said like Toyota, Volkswagen carefully plans its moves, including daily conference calls to Germany.
“But I really think Volkswagen moves a little quicker,” he said. “The key to making these plants successful is planning. We’ve been able to reduce costs and make our process very lean.”
About 60 percent of his time so far with Volkswagen has been spent in Germany, where VW has designed its Chattanooga plant and the car it will produce. But he recently bought a house in Ooltewah and has quickly become a transplanted Tennessean.
Volkswagen picked Chattanooga for its U.S. plant last summer, only a year after Mr. Jackson’s former employer, Toyota, bypassed Chattanooga for a site in Tupelo, Miss. Toyota recently suspended work at the Mississippi plant until the market improves.
“Don’t tell Toyota, but I’m glad they didn’t come to Chattanooga,” Mr. Jackson said.
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