Wil James, president of Toyota plant, to retire. Meet the woman who will replace him.

Wil James, president of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in Georgetown, is retiring, the company announced Friday afternoon.

James, who has held the position since July 2010 and succeeded Steve St. Angelo as the seventh president of the plant, began his career at the plant in 1987.

Susan Elkington, 46, now senior vice president at Georgetown, will become president in 2018. Elkington’s appointment will give Toyota three U.S. plants led by women: Millie Marshall leads Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, and Leah Curry leads Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia.

Elkington will oversee a $7 billion operation that employs more than 8,000 people and can produce as many as 550,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 engines annually.

Elkington is a native of Huntingburg, Ind. She earned her mechanical engineering degree from the University of Evansville in 1993 and started with Toyota Motor Corp as an assistant manager in Princeton, Ind., in 1998. She joined the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Plant in Georgetown January 2017 as senior vice president, overseeing the plant’s manufacturing and administrative functions. Before that, she was general manager of the production control division at Toyota Motor Corp.’s global headquarters in Toyota City, Japan. She was the first woman to serve in that role.

James said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon that Elkington’s elevation to the presidency had been part of his exit plan. He said Elkington had spent the last year “getting that sense of comfort with the expectation that when I moved on that she would move into the position of president.”

Under James’ tenure, the Georgetown Toyota plant has flourished.

In 2015, the company unveiled the Lexus ES 350 line. The company partnered with the Waste Services of the Bluegrass so that methane gas produced at the Central Kentucky Landfill would be used to help power the Georgetown plant.

Last April, Toyota announced a $1.33 billion investment that would be used to enable the plant to make vehicles using Toyota New Global Architecture, a system designed to make the company more nimble in car development.

In September, the company announced that $121 million would be used to produce more 2.5 liter engines. In October, Toyota unveiled an $80 million Production Engineering and Manufacturing Center, which includes design and testing equipment, 3D-printing, augmented reality and virtual reality labs.

Toyota has also teamed up with Bluegrass Community and Technical College to create a program that allows students to take manufacturing classes while working at Toyota.

James, 61, said he had been discussing retirement with his wife, Michaelene, for the last year and a half, and he had told Toyota management of his intention about a year ago. He said his two daughters and two grandchildren live in Kentucky, so he and Michaelene will maintain a home here, but the two also just finished building a house in Florida.

James’ announcement comes only a few weeks after he warned Georgetown workers that the plant needed to cut costs.

James said Friday that the cost-cutting message was nothing unusual: “We’ve always managed to address our challenges as a team,” James said.

The Toyota plant in Georgetown is its largest in the world and is a key reason for Scott County’s economic growth since 1986. The plant employs more than 8,000 people full-time and makes the Avalon and the Camry, the latter of which is one of the best-selling cars worldwide.

James’ other leadership positions in the company included being senior vice president of Toyota’s Princeton, Ind., plant. He has received numerous other accolades. James has been chairman on the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, is a board trustee with the National Urban League and was named one of the 100 most influential blacks in corporate America by Savoy Magazine in 2016.

James said his 30 years with Toyota “has been absolutely amazing. ... I just would like to be able to say, in every avenue I can, how appreciative I am that the people in Georgetown have allowed me to be a part of their team.”

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Wil James, president of Toyota plant, to retire. Meet the woman who will replace him.."