Hinterlands factory signals production revolution
Vehicle sector grappling with implications of fast-cha nging technology
While vehicle workers in Germany and South Korea fight to save their jobs, one of China’s youngest auto brands is gearing up to build sport utility vehicles (SUVs) at a new factory with digitally connected robots and a fresh workforce of 1,800 people.
About 140 kilometers away from Beijing, the Lynk & Co plant in Zhangjiakou, North China’s Hebei Province, combines technology and manufacturing know-how from the Geely and Volvo Cars units of China auto giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The 12 billion yuan ($1.89 billion) investment is a fresh example of the challenge confronting long-established auto factories in mature industrial economies.
As automakers adopt a new generation of manufacturing technology, industry officials are confident that they can deploy the same packages of robots, assembly line designs and digital quality control systems anywhere in the world – and train people to do the tasks robots cannot yet perform.
Plant manager Tong Xiangbei is in the vanguard of a technology revolution that enables automakers to put new factories in places like Zhangjiakou, a city of 4 million people that lies far from many of Geely’s parts makers.
“With this team, we could go anywhere and replicate this factory,” Tong, 42, who previously worked at Ford Motor Co, told Reuters during the first media tour of the factory.
The ability to build cars in almost any location that has electricity and decent roads is one factor behind Peugeot SA’s clash with German workers over proposed cost-cutting at Opel brand factories once owned by General Motors.
GM said it would invest $3.6 billion in its money-losing South Korean operations only after unions representing workers at its plants agreed to allow the shutdown of a factory in Gunsan, South Korea and gave concessions GM said will save $400 million to 500 million
a year. With Lynk & Co, Geely is targeting younger and less affluent buyers than typical Volvo customers, but who still demand more sophistication and technology than a standard Geely Automobile Holdings car for the mass market in China.
Lynk & Co vehicles already are competing with those made by GM, Peugeot and other automakers in China. The brand plans to launch in Europe next year .
Geely and Volvo have said they plan to bring the brand to the US but have not said when.
‘Middle of nowhere’
The Zhangjiakou complex will build Lynk & Co 02 SUVs and a sedan called the 03 for the Chinese market.
The plant has about 1,800 workers on one daily shift, laboring alongside nearly 300 robots.
When the factory goes to a second shift, it will employ 3,000 people capable of building about 200,000 cars per year, Tong said. Those are employment and production levels consistent with mature market auto plants.
The factory uses Kuka robots to weld together the bodies of its vehicles, the same brand used by Daimler AG to build Mercedes-Benz cars.
US-based Rockwell Automation and Germany’s Robert Bosch Gmbh supply the technology used on the final assembly line.
A robot from ABB glues windshields into each Lynk & Co 02 SUV, relieving human workers of that messy job.
US tool producer Atlas Copco provided what plant manager Tong describes as a “huge-ass nut runner” that bolts wheels on vehicles, records the force used and sends the data to a cloud server.
The Zhangjiakou factory’s advanced systems are evident in the robots seen by journalists during the tour, and other things that are missing.
Unlike many older vehicle factories, there are no natural gas-fueled forklifts or tug vehicles operated by drivers to haul parts to the assembly line. At Lynk & Co, parts are brought to work stations by automated machines.