Positive Post of the Day: Fiat Fixes Chrysler Edition
[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.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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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.