Aug
22
Chrysler Group’s approaches to Advanced Manufacturing Engineering: they’re aggressive in their development of greater flexibility. They’re working their capital equipment harder and longer. And they’re counting on technology advances to make vehicle manufacturing even better
Filed Under Chrysler News
ON MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY
“No, we don’t have enough flexibility right now,” Ewasyshyn candidly admits. But he goes on to say that they are working hard to increase it–but through evolution, not what he calls a “flexibility spree,” or an artificial program meant to increase the flexibility in the plants by some defined point in time. Of course, given the number of new programs that they’re working, the degree of flexibility that can be achieved by simply adding it with each new program is significant.
When asked to define what he means by flexibility, Ewasyshyn answers, “We’re not restricting ourselves to purely vehicle size.” That is, he says they’re not just thinking in terms of small-medium vehicle plants and large vehicle plants, which has pretty much been the approach other companies have taken. “It may be that we’ll have a small car cross-loaded into a plant that has the ability to build something bigger.” In fact, he says that because of the influences of sibling and affiliated companies–Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Hyundai–they are thinking differently than other companies. “We’re going to have to handle different architectures in similar buildings.” By way of further explanation, he says, “We’re trying to take a step back and look at it from a more universal approach than from a specific product or platform approach.” He references the now-famous/infamous situation at the Belvedere Assembly Plant, when it was discovered that the paint shop didn’t have sufficient overhead clearance to accommodate the PT Cruiser. As that plant has been redone, the concept of handling different-sized vehicles was taken into account: “It will never run anything as big as the minivan, but it doesn’t stop us from running different types of products in the same building.”
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