PRODUCTION VALUES
Seat’s vast Martorell facility is a paragon of cutting-edge automotive production and the home of the Cupra brand. Dan Prosser takes a tour
The sun is shining brightly and the air outside is thick with heat, but the production hall is cool and temperate. High up on one of the walls, right there for all to see, is a digital thermometer. It reads 22.7deg C. Room temperature. The production lines slip along in perfectly timed unison and automated robots carry parts from one corner of the hall to the other. There is no ear-splitting screeching and no noisy clanging; just the gentle background hum of a busy, expertly choreographed factory.
Seat’s Martorell facility, on the outskirts of Barcelona, is a vision of a modern and efficient car plant. It opened in 1993, a quarter of a century ago, and has evolved with every passing year to become the paragon of modernity that it is today. Workers wear load-bearing exoskeletons that literally take the strain of physical tasks, while maintenance workers use tablets equipped with augmented reality technology to quickly identify faults along the line. This is what it takes to keep the Martorell plant running smoothly, to keep those Leons, Ibizas and Aronas rolling off the production line at a rate of one every 30 seconds, all of them built to exacting standards.
Martorell is so much more than just a car plant, though. Home to the Spanish manufacturer’s research and development centre, design studio and motorsport workshops, Martorell is Seat itself.
Cupra, the marque’s famous performance division, is now an independent brand and it too calls Martorell home. Within the plant’s four-mile perimeter fence those highperformance hatchbacks and SUVS will be designed, engineered and manufactured, before being shipped all over the world.
Martorell was officially opened in February 1993 by King Juan Carlos I. Within the production halls, 2400 robots quietly whir away with the millimetric precision of a Swiss watch, between them helping to produce 2300 vehicles every day, or more than 450,000 each year. This year, Martorell manufactured its 10 millionth car.
Victor Diaz first strolled through the Martorell gates and into the factory 22 years ago. Then he was a young production line apprentice, but today Diaz works in the production office, helping to further refine the processes and conditions for the workers. During his time with Seat the Martorell factory has developed beyond recognition.
“I began working here in 1996, in the assembly workshop,” he recalls. “I worked on the Cordoba and the Ibiza. I was 20 years old and it was my first job in industry. I had never been to such a place before and when I walked in I was bowled over by the size of it. There were production lines moving as far as the eye
ROBOTS HAVE EASED THE STRAIN BUT THEY HAVEN’T TAKEN JOBS AWAY FROM LOCAL PEOPLE
could see and so much activity. I had never experienced anything like it before.
“My basic training was to be left on the production line with an older colleague who showed me the ropes as we went along. After a while, I realised I had been left on my own.
“There were no robots then; everything was done manually. There was lots of heavy lifting and unergonomic work, whereas today we have many robots and the work is almost totally automated.”
As Victor points out, those robots have eased the strain on workers but they haven’t taken away jobs from local people. In fact, Martorell now employs more people than at any other point in its history. The wellbeing of its employees is of the utmost importance to Seat. In fact, the company now has its own healthcare and rehabilitation centre, staffed by a team of 56 who are solely responsible for the welfare of Seat’s workers.
During his early days in the plant Victor found himself walking enormous distances throughout the factory during a typical shift. “I was intrigued,” he remembers, “so I wore a pedometer one day. After an eight-hour working day I had covered six miles.
“Things have changed tremendously since then, of course. There is very little movement on the part of the workers. Parts and tools are carried on automatic trollies and we walk only a very little. We just pick up the tools and the parts from the trollies themselves.
“A good example of the way things have changed is the fitting of a sunroof. Years ago it was done manually. You had to pick it up from the container – and it’s a heavy part – manoeuvre it inside the car, push it up against the roof, hold it in place with one hand and screw the many screws in with the other hand. It was demanding work. Now it’s done automatically – a robot puts it in place today.
“Training is another thing that has changed a lot. Before, it was on-the-job training with an older colleague. Now, before anybody starts working on the line, they’re given several days of training and everything is extremely well explained.”
In his new role Victor is helping to improve the working environment for Martorell’s thousands of employees. “If they are better
A CONSTANT REFINING OF PROCESSES HAS MADE MARTORELL ONE OF THE MOST ADVANCED CAR PLANTS IN EUROPE
trained and under less strain they will have more time to put more parts on more cars, thus adding value to the brand,” he says. Working in teams of 12 the factory staff move from one station to another every two hours, which keeps them engaged and motivated.
The most poignant moment in the build of any new car is the marriage of the body with the running gear, at which point an intricate collection of 3000 parts becomes one whole car, soon to be somebody’s pride and joy.
At Martorell the bodies swoop down from above, hanging from overhead tracks, before coming to a stop and hovering directly above the running gear assembly, which includes the engine and transmission, the suspension and the brakes. A hydraulic lift raises the running gear up into the body, the two halves measuring up perfectly. Then robots fasten dozens of bolts and screws to marry the two together. To watch that process unfold is like seeing a car being born every 30 seconds.
It’s hard to believe it now but there was a time when that heavy lifting was done by a team of burly workers; today all of it throughout Martorell is done by machinery. Even the batteries are lifted from a trolley next to the production line and into the cars by a hand-operated crane; the workers simply guide the battery into position.
Along the length of the production lines employees wear exoskeletons, spring-loaded braces strapped around the abdomen and up along the arms, around the body or down the legs, giving support where it’s required depending on the needs of a particular work station. Designed by the in-house biomechanics department, the exoskeletons can make a 4kg component feel like 1kg.
It’s exactly that sort of innovation, along with the constant refining of processes, that has made Martorell one of the most advanced car plants in Europe. Its evolution is set to continue, too. Martorell is quickly becoming a ‘smart factory’ – digitised and connected. Automated guided vehicles, exoskeletons and augmented reality are already used on a minute-by-minute basis, and in time collaborative robots and 3D printing will also become commonplace. On top of the innovative work Seat is doing is a new scheme, called Breakingfab, which invites outside entrepreneurs and start-up companies to suggest innovations of their own. The intention is to speed up the rate at which Martorell’s manufacturing processes evolve, keeping it right at the forefront of the vehicle manufacturing sector.
In the 25 years since the factory opened in 1993 Martorell has developed beyond recognition, while its daily output has grown from 1500 to 2300 cars. You can be certain the factory’s evolution over the next quarter of a century will be even greater still.