[ED: Our doctors tell us we need to write at least one “positive” post per day. A feature is born.]
Fiat is introducing a “World Class Manufacturing” campaign at Chrysler plants which will radically transform Chrysler’s manufacturing process. After all, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne takes the moral aspects of manufacturing very personally. “Waste is unethical,” he is known to have said; so why wouldn’t the Detroit News simply repeat it? And Fiat is famous for operating the most efficient, Dr. Seussian factories in the business. Like the Fiat of Brazil paint shop pictured above (more images of the plant here). Who wouldn’t want to be productive and/or hallucinating in that kind of working environment? The only disheartening element of this story is how far Chrysler’s plants have to come. Pop an extra Xanax and hit the jump to find out.
This image allegedly portrays workers at Chrysler’s Warren Assembly plant manufacturing Dodge Rams sometime last summer. Either that or it’s casual Friday in Sweatpants City. Where are the indoor trees and whimsically oversized microscopes depicting Chrysler’s commitment to research and development?
Luckily change is coming in a swift, unrelenting wave of condescension. “We were a little shocked by all the changes, including uniforms and only a water bottle allowed at your station,” one Canadian Chrysler employee says. But it gets crazier still. “To improve quality in production, acceptable margins for error are smaller, and greater precision is being demanded,” explains the DetN. “For example, each hole punched in a car body for assembly must be in a specific spot. Under the new manufacturing rules, the distance that hole can be off is less than it was under the old Chrysler system.”
It seems safe to say that we can all stop worrying about Chrysler now. If you still find yourself unable to stop worrying about Chrysler, please take another Xanax. And think positive.
Maybe it’s because I work in healthcare… But ,in my work the highest paid people, doing the most precise and delicate work, wear uniforms i.e. scrubs. If it’s good enough for a $2.5 million a year neurosurgeon, it’s good enough for the UAW.
The uniforms do seem to add a lot to the imagine of Honda and Toyota.
i think the uni’s work at building team spirit and enhance safety standards but I think getting rid of the substandard quality work is the more important.
On another point I’d think having more then just a sealed beverage container on the floor might be dangerous and distracting from your job.
i think the uni’s work at building team spirit but I getting rid of the “garbage” quality work is the more important.
But at the end of the day a lot of the Chrysler products suck and it has nothing to do with the build quality. A Sebring/Avenger built to the world’s most exacting quality standards is still a Sebring/Avenger. Maybe if the employees are lucky their increased devotion to quality (not to mention the government’s $$$)can help the company stick around until the better cars in the pipeline start showing up (if there are any, that is).
“Waste is unethical”
Does that mean Sergio’s going to give back the $2bil that GM wasted on Fiat?
The hole is punched in a specific spot? Really, who knew?
Your stamping a door inner say,with progresive dies. Each die has a function.the first one is called a “draw”.Then flange, or trim steel.The hole punches,maybe 50 or more of them are part of the process. Tolerences are pretty exact.A hole punch may have some movement.but not much.
The photo shows a nice clean plant. Both workers are dressed,for trim and hardware. The pair of them do that operation 500 times a day. I would guess late twenties. You think you could do her job in your fifties?
Thats why we have 30 and out.
Just doesn’t seem plausible.
Germans (a people who almost conquered the globe in the span of a few years) spent years and billions on Chrysler and could barely get it to sputter/cough.
Now Italiana (known more for the mafia and the Vatican) are here to save the day?
We live in strange times.. strange indeed….
Good luck!
The photo of the Warren plant shows precisely why uniforms are a good idea. Crush injuries to feet and cuts to exposed skin are both avoidable by proper footwear and clothes.
I’m not so bothered by the shorts and shirt on an assembly/trim line, but leather workboots always make sense in that environment.
World Class Manufacturing banners have been placed on all Chrysler plant signs months ago. Guess it is cheaper to cover up “Daimler” than to waste $$ on new cosmetic signs
The exposed skin is a bit of a shock after hanging around Honda MAP for a Year and a half (doing computer work for a supplier). Then again, it’s looks like they’re doing wiring (hooking in harnesses would be my guess), so it’s nothing worth making a case about, at least they have gloves.
OTOH, I know they make steel-cap sneakers, but those don’t look like it. And the lady is lacking any eye protection. You can’t even visit MAP without both. Working under-hood like that, I’d expect bump-caps too.
BTW, uniforms are neat, but white shows a lot (and they generally rotate through 5 sets). The machine-mantenance folks tend to look impressively messy most of the time.
You know, I go to a local dealership to have my domestic repaired and or serviced. Always always do they wear a service tech’s shirt and pants. These pictures just exude sloppiness, even if the work is not so.
This doesn’t surprise me. European manufacturers are use to dealing with labor as a very precious resource because of the high employment costs in Europe. They prefer spending a lot of up-front capital in building a well thought out factory and implementing really efficient processes as opposed to throwing ($$$) labor into the breach.
Take the BMW Leipzig plant; it puts almost everyone to shame in the clean, efficient, automated and almost sexy departments:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/23/27366638_46c59ff45a.jpg?v=0
@AndrewDederer
The lady has eye protection, it’s just hard to see. If you zoom up, you can see the frame of the glasses running over the clear lens piece.
As for clothes, the capri pants are surprising, but the real surprise is the loose fitting clothing. I’ve seen a decent variety of clothing at Toyota plants (most, but not all, from the Team stores), but I’ve never seen anyone dressed in a baggy shirt or showing any leg.
She does, you’re right just real hard to see. The exposed skin and lack of cap (with plastic insert) are the only real shocks otherwise. I’m going to assume that those are steel-toes (they sell them in a lot of styles).
It’s not THAT off, but most line workers I saw wore more than the minimum. The teams that put in headliners and floors always wore kneepads and caps (and may have even had elbow pads). The ones that worked near the welding machines were easy to spot (they wore tube kevlar “sleeves” from their gloves over their cuffs). And of course paint line workers always wore 1-piece suits in the booths.
I wonder what the cycle time is at that factory? some jobs (headliners for example) were “double” (they had 2 teams doing alternate vehicles). Want to know what it is like to do a regular assembly job? Think of something you can do in a minute, then do it 450 times a day every day.
Different areas require different clothing. PPE is
the proper name.Personal Protective Equipment. Safety glasses are mandatory everywhere. Steel toed work boots are not needed in trim and hardware.When one has to move all day’ tight clothes don’t cut it. Do you ever see Tiger Woods with tight clothes?
Coveralls for people involved in dirty work are available,on request. Try wearing coveralls when your crawling in an out of a car 500 times a day. As far as shorts or any exposed skin,even though the truck is painted she could catch her leg on a burr.
Rant time….If I had a dollar for every pencil pusher,who figured he knew how a factory worker should dress, I would be rich. That young lady and her co worker,are doing gruelling, back breaking work. The temperature could be 90 degrees in there. A smart manager will leave them alone to do thier job.
Every so often some hotshot leaves the world of academia and decides.he is going to make his mark on the factory floor. The runny nose little genius can’t figure out how to improve effeceincy. School never taught him people skills. So he decides to piss everybody off,including the lower management,with some stupid useless rule. No newspapers,no radios,only one water bottle.no running shoes,long sleeves mandatory,no shorts.How about “no talking” it was tried believe me.
I’ve been in that plant, and all other Chryler plants. Warren Truck, like the others, can get over 100 degrees and very humid inside. There is no air conditioning in this 70-plus year old building.
At least I could go cool off in the office once in a while, but I feel for the people stuck on the plant floor. I was there for the new Ram launch and I can tell you that during the media blits, when those pics were taken, it was easily 110 degrees or more in there.
I love when jackasses can site behind a computer and complain about what other people do/don’t do based on one little picture. Most of you jerks wouldn’t survive one day in that place.
Stop picking on the UAW workers already. And before the flaming begins… I am NOT a UAW worker. I’m just defending some very good people who bust their ass every day.
@ Thanks for the support Autojunkie. Working on the line at 110 degrees is pure hell. Its been 15 years since the last time I did it,and I can remember it like it was yesterday.
I love when jackasses can site behind a computer and complain about what other people do/don’t do based on one little picture. Most of you jerks wouldn’t survive one day in that place.
Its not Flaming its just people pointing out the obvious that the world changed and the UAW didn’t and destroyed itself in the process. One of the plants that the company I work for owns, the production employees haven’t received a raise in 4 years, why you might ask, because everyone of our competitors (and alot of our customers) have moved to China and Mexico, and it won’t take much more to make us to do the same.
They understand that the world has changed, there aren’t jobs and they will take what they can get, because its alot better than nothing.
And 80% of what the UAW has is still alot better than what most of this country does (especially considering cost of living)and there would be alot more jobs if they could have accepted that.
So the next answer is we have to protect our high paying manufacturing jobs with tariffs and quotas, but the reality is that the large majority of americans don’t want that, so its not going to happen.
And 80% of what the UAW has is still alot better than what most of this country does (especially considering cost of living)and there would be alot more jobs if they could have accepted that.
You’re probably correct… it’s one of the reasons GM, Ford and Chrysler continue to look overseas for mfg, and one of the reasons why transplants didn’t go to UAW areas.
WetWilly :
August 24th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
“Waste is unethical”
Does that mean Sergio’s going to give back the $2bil that GM wasted on Fiat?
—————————————
FYI, Sergio is managing Fiat, not GM. Whatever GM wasted, is not a problem for Sergio’s ethics.
I disagree wholeheartedly, wsn; Fiat and GM had an argument over whether the “engagement” was still valid when Fiat started playing around with other “potential partners” and GM decided not to consumate the merger, so to speak.
GM started to pull out (sorry if this sounds too graphic/get your minds out of the gutter!) and Fiat said – not so fast, you promised, we’ll sue!
In the end, $2 billion was the “get the F*** out of my life” payoff to the miscreants at Fiat, who promptly went out and got laid by anyone who’d glance their way / had additional tie-ups for auto technology elsewhere.
Then when little miss Chrysler got tossed out of her repossessed house and had her credit card taken away, the powers that be tossed miss Chrysler into the lap of Mr Fiat – take her off our hands and support her ‘coz we’re done paying welfare to her….
And that’s where Chrysler and Fiat stand / lay.
Mike and AutoJunkie – You missing the point –
This (particular) story isn’t about bashing the UAW. It’s about how new senior management is going to make Chrysler into a success.
FIAT is going to come into the Chrysler plants and fix everything by painting giant microscopes
on the walls. See? Doesn’t everybody feel better already?
Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne takes the moral aspects of manufacturing very personally. “Waste is unethical,” he is known to have said;
This line of thought has a long tradition at FIAT. That’s why they used to sweep up the metal scraps off the floor and turn them into cars….
So now Chrysler can claim that they have well-built, crappy designed cars?
@autojunkie:
That is why I have a BS, MBA, JD and CPA. So I don’t have to survive one day in your private little hell. Oh and I do bust my ass every single day. Phuque!
@Logans_ Run..You are 100% correct, and kudo’s to you dude. But there is no way you got all them letters after your name without some really hard work. It kind’a all comes out in the wash eh?
For example, each hole punched in a car body for assembly must be in a specific spot
I’m sure they could have worded that better, because it gives the impression that you can punch holes any damn where you please.
Now that said, the plastic trim alignment in your average Chrysler gives that same impression
I kinda resent the pencil-pusher bit. I wasn’t working for the company, but I had to meet the same safety code (that is toes and eyes) that everyone did, even the office staff if they went onto the floor. And I was crawling over and around cars a couple hours most days taking data. I didn’t wear a uniform (barring the company-logo polo). Everyone else did (in varying degrees of disheveled) summer or winter. Best place in the winter, on the catwalk around the paint oven, if you could ignore the smell.
Was just noting that, in my experience the above workers seemed a bit undercovered. Specifically the lack of head protection for someone who’d be ducking into 400+ bodies a day.
BTW a “bump cap” is nothing more than a ballcap with a hard plastic insert. It’s not for protection against falling things, just against hitting your head.
And a whole lot of people without blindfolds undoubtedly wholeheartedly disagree with you, menno.
GM simply went into bed with FIAT under promise of latter marriage. GM got his hands on the prize he was after: top-of-the-line diesel engines, still powering most of GM European sales and an excellent small platform from Grande Punto, directly used to build Corsa. So it is FIAT sourced parts and technology keeping GM Europe alive for quite a few years now.
What Fiat got was: an overweight and under-engineered platform which, after hefty FIAT investment, now underpins Alfa 159 and an unusable V6 petrol engine in need of complete overhaul to be even remotely suitable to fit into 159.
And when FIAT tried to cash-in the promise of marriage (buyout), GM was of course not prepared to honor it. They got what they wanted, why on earth should they care what happens afterwards!?!? While GM hoped to get out of the mess for free, they still got out veeeery cheap, for a measly 2bn US$. Far less than they would have to pay for everything they pillaged out of FIAT. So if anyone is at loss here, it is only FIAT.