Colombia’s two key vehicle assemblers – General Motors and Sofasa/Renault – have signed a $US8m cooperation deal to improve management practices and share original equipment suppliers in order to lower local assembly costs in this fast-developing South American market.
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At a press conference held at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Arts (MamBo), the presidents of both companies jointly announced the so-called ‘Competitiveness Management Model’ project (CMM).
CMM is intended to bring together the best of GM, Renault and Toyota management practices (Renault assembler Sofasa also builds Toyota cars under contract to the Japanese automaker) and increase efficiency in three areas: quality, cost and “opportunity”. Its fundamentals are: “excellence, strategic management, integral people development, production systems, quality passion, logistics, costs management and continuous improvement”.
GM Andean president Paul Ross said: “There’s a $466 cost gap between a vehicle assembled in Colombia and one imported from México. There’s no choice: if we don’t reduce this cost we won’t be able to built cars [in Colombia] and we both don’t want to be just importers. Our aim is to reduce the gap to $42 in 2010.”
Germán Calle, president of Renault and Toyota assembler Sofasa, added: “We will invest $8m dollars in our suppliers over the next three years.”
GM expects to sell 219,000 vehicles in Colombia next year, 360,000 in Venezuela and 88,000 in Ecuador, a total of 667,000 for its Andean markets where it has a combined 30% market share.
Juan Vargas
