TITELTHEMA
Clear sign of upward movement for Jeep: FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne and Agnelli grandson John Elkann at the factory opening in Brazil. It was not something that President Dilma Rousseff could miss.
TITELTHEMA
The best of all production worlds has been assembled in the GOIANA SHOWCASE FACTORY in Brazil. A quite unusual story unfolded in the run-up to its official opening. The human factor stood at the center of the planning.
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iat-Chrysler Production Chief Stefan Ketter has been in Brazil for two years, supervising the implementation of the “largest project in Fiat history” in terms of size and complexity. In 2010, FCA decided that he would spend a few years in the Pernambuco region, at the tip of the northeastern corner of Brazil, and 7,500 kilometers from Italy. The group’s top management had decided to build a new factory there. And this despite the fact that the Italians were already operating one of the largest plants in the world in southern Brazil: the mega-production facility Betim with an annual output of 800,000 vehicles. FCA’s top leadership argued that this was too little for the alliance’s growth plans in the medium term. As Ketter put it, it did not make sense to push capacity in the existing facility of Betim over the threshold of 1 million units.
With the best of FCA’s employees
Bilder: FCA
Trendsetting 2
Automobil Produktion · September 2015
And so began the search for a suitable location. It was the start of an unusual site selection process and ended in the little town of Goiana. It was there that the government made a 12- millionsquare-meter (!) property available to the automaker. FCA, one of the largest automakers in the world, invested 1.3 billion euros there and guaranteed 4,500 new jobs. As a dowry, the OEM promised in-depth localization of 80 percent. After the terms were negotiated, Ketter’s team got started and made history with the first plant for the FCA entity. A history that is so different from the brownfield plants elsewhere in the world. At the end of the story in April 2015, with great fanfare, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Sergio Marchionne and Fiat heir John Elkann pressed the start button to launch the production of the current Jeep Renegade. A happy ending. Mission accomplished. But in this case, the project’s end is just the beginning. At the start of the planning, Ketter brought his top 200 experts from around the world into the project. The group’s goal: The realization of not just “a facto-
ry,” but the “FCA model” factory, a plant that shined with the most advanced and most flexible production technology, and optimally combined human beings and machines. In the process – and here the human factor comes into play – it was also imperative to meet additional criteria such as superb scores for ergonomics, safety and sustainability in manufacturing – okay, what else? Today, the most advanced factory in the FCA empire in fact stands in Goiana, Brazil, and it should retain that title for the foreseeable future, according to Ketter. “In addition, Goiana is serving as a hub for additional developments in other plants,” he said. In this way, Goiana serves as a kind of parent plant for other factories, in China, India and the U.S., for example. “They are naturally watching how the three planned model lines develop here,” Ketter added. Besides the Jeep Renegade, two other models based on the so-called small-wide platform should soon roll off line. In October, production is starting on the stillsecret Jeep pickup, sized between the Fiat Strada and the Toyota Hilux. And in January 2016, they will be joined by a Fiat model. But everything is still strictly confidential.
22,000 Best Practises
To breathe life into the expert group’s noble objective, Goiana Plant Manager Giuseppe Figliuolo has assembled 22,000 best practices from the 177 current FCA plants. Figliuolo is continually working on implementing the latest practices at Goiana as quickly as possible. As a result, the Goiana plant is the blueprint for all future FCA plants. The first “copy” is already standing in Guangzhou, China. Jeeps will also be built there. The joint factory, operated by FCA and Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), will launch production in early 2016. That’s the reason 40 Chinese have just been trained there. But they don’t have much time. Jeep is planning to build and sell eight competitive SUV models in China in the B- to E-segment in China by 2018. But back to Goiana and the main players. The plant is due to manufacture 250,000 units a year. Automobil Produktion · September 2015
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