Belvidere lessons help Chrysler

AMY J. VAN HORN | ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR

An employee at Chrysler’s Belvidere assembly plant watches as a line of Dodge Calibers crawls along the assembly line last February. DaimlerChrysler trained employees at the Belvidere site to use the Japanese-style team concept of manufacturing.

Published: January 2, 2007

Conversion to flexible manufacturing plant had its troubles

By Alex Gary | ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR


BELVIDERE — Chrysler’s Belvidere assembly plant has met “about 94 percent” of expectations heading into 2007, according to Frank Ewasyshyn, the Chrysler Group’s head of manufacturing.

The 41-year-old, 3.9-million-square-foot plant was in the spotlight all year because the company spent $419 million retraining its work force under the Japanese-style team concept and retooling the plant, including adding 700 robots to its body shop.

Still, there were growing pains as DaimlerChrysler plunged into flexible manufacturing, where workers can ramp up production of one model and cut another based on demand without excessive downtime or expensive retoolings. Lessons learned in Belvidere will help the company incorporate the new “flexible” system in its other 13 North American assembly plants.
After a quick start with the Dodge Caliber from January through May, software issues led to shutdowns in the plant’s now fully robotic body shop as workers moved the Jeep Compass into production.

Sales of the Caliber plunged more than 40 percent from June to July because the plant couldn’t keep up with demand.

Ewasyshyn, who talked to the Register Star in a telephone interview in late December, said the company learned some tough lessons in the Belvidere rollout it’s already putting to use at its Sterling Heights, Mich.-plant, which received a $500 million investment a few months after Belvidere.

“We’re ahead of schedule at Sterling Heights because of what we learned in Belvidere,” he said. “We did a better job of integrating the software at Sterling Heights.

“For one thing, we have a different supplier integrating the software than we did at Belvidere,” he added. Global robotics leader ABB Robotics of Switzerland installed the robots and software in Belvidere. Ewasyshyn said ABB did not install the software for Sterling Heights. “We also put a lot of effort early on (in Sterling Heights) of integrating all of the models. In Belvidere, our primary focus was on the Caliber and getting that going. We did a lot of the Compass work on the fly.”

Workers at the Sterling Heights plant put together the Dodge Stratus Sedan, Chrysler Sebring Sedan and Chrysler Sebring Convertible.

Although the Patriot is now in production in Belvidere, it doesn’t mean the launch is over for the more than 3,600 people working on three shifts. Ewasyshyn said the plant has only integrated 66 percent of the Caliber, Compass and Patriot models.

The Caliber is fully integrated, but workers haven’t started producing diesel versions of the Compass, which is key for the European market, and so far only the left-hand drive Patriot is coming off the line. They still need to introduce the right-hand drive and diesel versions.

Even when those are up and running, change will be a constant.

“The beauty of the system is you can run Pilots at the same time you are producing retail versions of other models,” he said. “That’s going to cut millions in cost in the future. In Belvidere, they are always going to be working on Pilots. In fact, they’ve already seen one.”

The plant is set up to produce four different models. Last February, the company unveiled the 300-horsepower Dodge Caliber SRT4 at the Chicago Auto Show and said it would be built at Belvidere. Officials haven’t mentioned the muscle-car Caliber version since.

Ewasyshyn refused to talk about when dealers would begin seeing Caliber SRT4s. Instead he wanted to focus on the Belvidere work force.

“The biggest learning curve was the team structure, what the workers showed us about building cars,” he said.

For decades, U.S. automotive production was based on assembly line system Henry Ford set up in 1908, the same year the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series, where workers install the same part or execute the same process hour upon hour.

In the team concept, workers decide as a group how best to accomplish the tasks they have signed up for and how to make the process more cost-effective. Instead of doing one job every day, team members handle a variety of tasks.

“That was more important than any piece of hardware. They were the first U.S. plant to grab it and run with it. I’m extremely proud of them.”