Chrysler is betting $1 billion that the minivans it will begin making in St. Louis in 1995 will carry the company into the next century.
If Chrysler wins, the company will continue to dominate the lucrative market for minivans, St. Louis will remain the second largest maker of vehicles in North America, and the United Auto Workers will keep 5,000 jobs in St. Louis.
If the minivan fails, Chrysler-already financially strapped-could collapse. The automaker, therefore, is taking no chances.
Chrysler is asking assembly-line workers from the St. Louis plant to come to the company`s technology center in Auburn Hills, a Detroit suburb, to help design the next-generation minivan. In less than two years, hundreds of workers from the St. Louis area will join engineers at the center`s shiny new campus, the size of a half-dozen football fields.
The old Chrysler Plant No. 1 in Fenton, Mo., closed since mid-summer, will be rebuilt. When it reopens, the adjacent Plant No. 2 will close, and the Chrysler workers will begin work in the new plant. Along with new equipment, the workers will have new responsibilities in making the minivan.
Plant No. 1 will turn out about 7,000 minivans a week without resorting to futuristic manufacturing techniques. There will be robots, of course, but people still will build much of the vehicle.
”The plant will be proven technology,” said Martha Wallace, a Chrysler executive in charge of developing assembly methods at the technology center.
”That is a pervasive Chrysler philosophy.”
Chrysler cannot afford to experiment in building the new minivan, Wallace said. Chrysler holds about 47 percent of the minivan market and, in recent months, has increased its share at the expense of rivals General Motors and Ford.
Chrysler has lost almost $900 million this year, partly because of an industry drop in sales and partly because of competition from foreign automakers. Some analysts say the company may not survive.
By all means, Chrysler is not alone in losing money this year. Together with Ford and General Motors, the industry may lose up to $5 billion, the worst year ever.
Analysts say the situation is even worse than it appears, because the Japanese are expected to expand their 30 percent share of the American auto market once the recession ends. And, they say, Chrysler is in the weakest position because it has the least cash to carry it through hard times while developing the new vehicles it needs to compete with Asian automakers.
More Top Picks Best Mechanical Keyboards For Gaming
So in mid-1993-95 weeks before the assembly line at Fenton`s Plant No. 1 starts to move-about 30 Chrysler autoworkers from St. Louis will visit with Wallace and other engineers at Chrysler`s technology center.
They will see a hand-built version of the new minivan. And the autoworkers will offer suggestions for changing it to make it easier to manufacture.
Wallace said most of the suggestions are likely to be practical, not dramatic.
”Some of them can be as small as, `You can`t get the air gun close enough to drive that bolt,` (or) `If the nut falls off, you can`t get it out because it is inside the door,` ” she said.
In the past, Chrysler workers have figured out ways to better install the engine lights on vehicles while eliminating unneeded parts. They were the first to figure out that a vehicle`s glass should be mounted before the molding that holds it in place. Some jobs that once took 10 hours to complete now can be done in less than eight minutes.
Even minor improvements, when added together, make a big difference in manufacturing costs. A worker`s idea that saves $3 in the cost of making a single minivan would save Chrysler more than $20,000 a week in the cost of making minivans at Fenton.
Chrysler has built a miniature assembly line at the technology center, in part so workers can contribute ways to improve the building of cars and vans. Worker involvement in manufacturing design is not a new concept but has never been utilized so early or so heavily.
Just as workers are changing the design of the minivan of the future, they are changing the way they will build it.
For example, at Chrysler No. 1, no one will work in a pit. Older auto plants typically had some workers who spent their day in pits, reaching up to install parts on the underside of cars as they passed overhead.
Chrysler now has a conveyor line that flips the vehicle on its side, allowing workers to stand on the floor to install parts.
”They are going to try to get rid of all overhead jobs,” said Ray Ramsey, an official with UAW Local 110, which represents the minivan workers. When Chrysler began talking about building the new minivan at Plant No. 1, the UAW offered a simple suggestion-cool the plant. Auto plants typically are warmer than outdoor temperatures by 10 or 20 degrees, meaning people build vehicles in temperatures as high as 120 degrees in summer.
But cooling a 2.6 million-square-foot auto plant is expensive, and the company was reluctant to do it.
Stan Marshall, a UAW vice president who took part in the negotiations with Chrysler, said the union argued that workers would be more productive if the plant was comfortable.
On the other hand, Marshall said the autoworkers in St. Louis had heard rumors that Chrysler would build the van in Canada.
So the UAW accepted Chrysler`s proposal to run the plant on three daily shifts of seven hours each, something never tried in the U.S. before. Workers will be paid for eight hours` work, but overtime will be sharply reduced.
Chrysler agreed to lower the temperature in the plant by 20 degrees on hot days.
The company will save on overtime, and the workers get a shorter week and a commitment to keeping jobs in St. Louis.