Brose has officially opened its seventh Chinese production facility – the new plant in Beijing means the group is now present in five of the country’s six automotive industry regions.
The mechatronic specialist began producing door systems in the 14,000 sq m production plant in the Daxing district of south Beijing last spring – for C- and E-class and GLK models built by Beijing Benz Automotive (BBAC).
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Brose Beijing is the group’s second factory in Asia making door systems using the just-in-sequence (JIS) method where the supplier ensures the exact quantity of components and systems required by the customer are available exactly on schedule: the parts also have to arrive in exactly the right sequence. Production and shipment are carried out in pace with the customer’s vehicle production.
At the Beijing plant, this means that after receiving an order for a door system, Brose has around five hours in which to assemble, fully inspect and ship a ready-to-install sub-assembly. The door systems are delivered directly to BBZC’s final assembly line about eight kilometres (five miles) away.
“Given this firmly defined time window, redundant communications and supply systems, as well as robust plant technology, are in place to guarantee supplies to the customer,” said Harley Yu, general manager of the new plant.
“In Europe, we have been producing our door systems in sequence with our customers since the late nineties. We launched JIS production of door systems at our Shanghai plant in May 2000, the first supplier to do so in China. From that plant, we supply SVW”.
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By GlobalDataToday, the Brose Group operates 13 JIS production plants worldwide.
Yu added: “The Brose Productivity System has already earned several awards for our German JIS plants. We are now developing this standardised production concept that guarantees high quality standards in China too.”
The Beijing factory will also begin producing window regulators for BAIC before the end of the year. Further projects for various local and international customers start in 2013.
The workforce at the Beijing location is poised to rise from the current 80 to 110 by the end of the year; by 2015, it is anticipated that some 260 employees will be generating sales of around CNY750m (US$119m).
