Amidst all the gloomy U.S. automotive news of plant closures, employee layoffs and lost market share, if you look closer you’ll find some positively creative things taking place at a handful of automakers’ plants. Here we offer a look at some of the cool initiatives, processes and practices going on within these steel doors.

Amidst all the news of General Motors and Ford shedding thousands of employees and shutting down plants throughout the United States and losing market share, as well as the recent closing of the nation’s oldest auto assembly plant, if you look closer you’ll find some pretty cool things going on within the steel doors of a handful of automakers’ plants.

The Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance plant in Dundee, Michigan, is more automated and thus leaner than most; the facility’s total headcount is 275, significantly less than a typical engine plant. Yet one of the main reasons the assembly lines often seem empty is that a lot of the workers are in training, Workforce Management recently reported. Over several months, employees will receive up to 1,160 hours of training — on subjects ranging from how to assemble an engine to the study of mathematical formulas designed to teach problem-solving skills — in class and on the assembly floor.

“The fact that we are ahead of our production schedule allows us to focus our people on problem solving and continuous improvement,” GEMA president Bruce Coventry recently told Workforce Management.

It is no surprise, then, that many automakers around the world, including GEMA’s three owners — DaimlerChrysler, Mitsubishi and Hyundai — are keeping an eye on the Dundee facility. The plant, which opened in October, stands out most by the way in which it manages its workforce: contractors, referred to as “partners” by the plant, work alongside assembly workers and engineers; and its hourly employees are highly educated and rotate jobs and shifts to provide greater flexibility.

There are no foremen overseeing the workers at GEMA. In their place are team leaders who, rather than observe teams from the sidelines, work alongside six-person groups. Each group includes an engineer.

GEMA’s nonexempt workers, who start at $21 an hour and work up to $30 within five years, must have either a two-year technical degree, a skilled journeyman’s card or five years’ experience in advanced machining. This level of education is key to GEMA being more flexible.

Further, workers rotate jobs — a model that is also designed to give the plant more flexibility. By rotating jobs, the plant hopes to keep workers engaged and reduce the potential for injury, Coventry said. The chance of workers developing ergonomic injuries is lower if they aren’t repeating the exact same motions all day long, he says.

Workers also rotate shifts in crews of three, allowing the plant to have nearly continuous operation: 21 hours a day, six days a week, 294 days of the year.

Meanwhile, employee flexibility is playing a significant role at Honda’s plants and desks. The trick, Honda president Takeo Fukui recently told Forbes, is “to give people the freedom to spend and the freedom to make mistakes. If management oversight is too strong, then it’s difficult to innovate.”

At Honda, the real superstars are not the finance guys and marketers, but the engineers. Longtime auto analyst John Casesa, who now runs a consulting company, said of Honda, “There’s not a company on earth that better understands the culture of engineering.” Of course, like all of his predecessors, Fukui is an engineer who started in R&D and later ran the subsidiary.

The flexible, engineering-focused strategy at Honda seems to be working. Honda has never had an unprofitable year.

In August, Autoblog reported on Toyota’s most visible project, a massive upgrade to its 660,000-units-a-year Takaoka assembly plant. The plant — referred to as “the model for clone facilities in the U.S., Canada and France” — is assembling proven small-scale innovations into new systems that are greater than the sum of their parts. Takaoka’s upgrades include the following:

• A new welding system that dramatically cuts the cost of jigs and tooling;
• A “set parts system” that delivers a kit of parts for each vehicle so line workers don’t have to sort through parts bins for the right part;
• New stamping presses that use servo-motors to replace hydraulics, combined with high-speed delivery robots; and
• A new paint process that eliminates the need to dry the base coat, plus faster electro-static rust-coating.

It doesn’t sound too earth-shaking, Autoblog noted, “but the changes will up the production on each line from 220,000 units a year to 250,000 while simultaneously shortening the line.”

Some of the more notable and widely discussed plant and factory initiatives involve companies initiating strategies to avoid contributing to melting ice caps and killing coral reefs.

Earlier this year, Volvo Trucks announced its decision to make its truck assembly plant in Ghent, Belgium, entirely free of carbon dioxide. “Three wind-power generating stations will be built beside the plant along with a new biofuel production facility to supply electricity and heating without making any net contribution to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” the company announced. The project is due to come online in 2007. This is Volvo Trucks’ second assembly to become “carbon dioxide-free.” Its Tuve plant in Sweden became the first such plant last year.

Meanwhile, Honda (again) announced in June plans to build a $550 million automobile plant on a 1,700-acre tract in Decatur County, Indiana. According to the automaker, “the Indiana plant will employ advanced methods of energy and emission reduction with the goal to become a ‘zero waste to landfill’ factory.” The goal is that the plant “will have the smallest environmental footprint of any Honda auto plant in North America,” said Akio Hamada, president of Honda of America Mfg. Inc., and head of Honda’s manufacturing operations in the North America Region.

In May, BMW’s facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, became the first automotive paint shop to fuel its operations using methane obtained from a landfill. “A 9.5-mile pipeline transports the gas derived from decomposing waste to the BMW plant from a nearby landfill,” Autoblog also reported.

BMW states that the painting process accounts for nearly half of the energy used in its entire automotive assembly process, and that the energy recovered by the use of the methane is equivalent to the electricity used by nearly 10,000 homes.

What about U.S. automakers, you ask? Well, after the ongoing plant-closure misfortunes of GM, the automaker has tried to redeem a smidgen of positive press by announcing its newest assembly plant, a “green” facility in Lansing Delta Township, Michigan, that:

• Collects rainwater from the roof to flush toilets, as non-manufacturing use of water is 45 percent lower than normal, saving 4.1 million gallons every year;
• Has a reflective roof to reduce heat absorption, saving costs to cool the building; and
• Has 800 lights in the assembly area, half that in a typical plant.

It was built with one-fourth recycled materials. About 80 percent of the waste generated during construction — nearly 4,000 tons — was diverted from landfills. Overall, the 2.4 million-square-foot facility is expected to save more than 40 million gallons of water and 30 million kilowatt hours of electricity in its first 10 years of operation.

The assembly plant received a gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. It is the only automotive manufacturing plant in the world to ever receive any level of LEED certification. Officials have billed the auto plant as “as the world’s most environmentally friendly” and estimate GM will spend $1 million a year less on energy than in a typical plant.

Finally, we come to Ford. In addition to the automaker’s Dearborn truck plant using a “living roof” to help heat and cool the building, Ford Motor Company is attempting to convert 90 percent of its plants to “flexible manufacturing” sites by 2011, the Dow Jones Newswires recently reported (via Reliable Plant), citing manufacturing chief David Sczupak.

Sczupak said the automaker will spend a sizeable share of its capital expenditures on converting its plants into more efficient and “flexible” operations, allowing such facilities to build more than one type of vehicle. According to Sczupak, approximately 70 percent of Ford’s plants currently use flexible manufacturing.

Ford of Europe is now reaping the benefits of a three-year, $1.67 million investment in flexible manufacturing facilities at its two UK-based engine plants, the automaker announced in August.

In the high-tech Dagenham and Bridgend plants, engine blocks are mounted on standard-sized platens prior to their journey down the assembly line. A bar code system ensures timely delivery of the components line-side operators need to assemble each individual engine. With this flexible system, the highly trained line operators are able to switch between different products smoothly and efficiently.

So there you have it. Automakers outside the U.S. are making notable strides in their continued authority of the industry. And as the entrances of many U.S. towns welcome visitors with abandoned factories — telling us more about the state of automotive manufacturing than any analyst or think tank ever could — if you look inside the remaining factories and at the exteriors of the plants themselves, you’ll find some positively interesting things going on. Hopefully, on the domestic front, it’s enough.

Sources

Nation’s longest-operating auto plant faces final days
by Julie M. McKinnon
The Toledo Blade, June 25, 2006

Engine of Change
by Jessica Marquez
Workforce Management, July 17, 2006

Engineers Rule
by Jonathan Fahey and Tim Kelly
Forbes, Sept. 4, 2006 (issue)

Toyota raising the bar in manufacturing efficiency
by Stuart Waterman
Autoblog, Aug. 7, 2006

Volvo Trucks makes its assembly plant in Belgium carbon dioxide-free
corp. press release
Volvo, Feb. 22, 2006

Honda to Build New Automobile Manufacturing Plant in Indiana
corp. press release
Honda, June 28, 2006

BMW using methane to fuel its paint shop
by Eric Bryant
Autoblog, May 8, 2006

Ford pushing its plants toward flexible manufacturing
Reliable Plant magazine, Aug. 14, 2006

Ford Flexible Engine Production Boosted By Investment In Britain
Ford Motor Company press release
WebWire, Aug. 22, 2006