Zama was a highly automated plant. Of the approximately 3,000 spot welds per car, over 97% were performed automatically. This high level of automation had been achieved over a number of years. The current high level of automatic spot welding was achieved around 1980. To sustain this high level of automation, Zama contained nearly 300 robots. All of these robots were designed by Nissan but only about 40% were actually manufactured by the firm.