General Motors is opening a new supplier park in Arlington, TX to support future vehicle production at its Arlington Assembly Plant.
The park is expected to be up and running by 2018, and it will employ 1,250 employees. This includes 850 new jobs in the Arlington area. According to the company, about 600 of the new jobs created in the new park will replace work previously done outside of the U.S.
The new jobs are in addition to the 7,000 new U.S. jobs that the company promised at the beginning of the year when it announced a $1 billion investment in U.S. factories.
The announcement came at a ground-breaking event on Friday, June 16 that was attended by notable representatives including U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and GM Senior VP of Global Purchasing and Supply Chain Steve Kiefer.
The new supplier park will have two industrial manufacturing and warehouse buildings with more than 1.2 million square feet.
GM has been operating in the Arlington area since 1954, and currently employs around 4,225 people who build Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans, GMC Yukons, and the Cadillac Escalade.
International Automotive Components (IAC) Group has committed to establishing operations at the automotive logistics center. The Luxemburg-based company supplies GM with interior and exterior trim.
The supplier park strategy is not new to GM. The company already has parks adjacent to U.S. manufacturing sites in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana, and the company says that it plans to continue to expand this tactic. The parks result in significant savings from reduced transportation costs, higher quality communications and continuous improvement activities.
For THOMASNET.com, I'm David Mantey, and this is Your Industrial Daily.