Dacia, the Renault Group’s Romanian unit, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but has its sights set firmly on the future.
In fact, it calls its main plant in Pitesti The Factory of the Future following around EUR2.8bn of investment over the past 10 years.
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At its heart is a 4.0 strategy, or the fourth industrial revolution, disruption and cyber systems.
Thierry Brancard, digital officer manufacturing, said: “Cars are now more personalised, more ecologically sound, connected and increasingly autonomous. This makes manufacturing them more complicated.
“Our strategy ends with customer satisfaction but it starts with training and skills, maintaining standards, relationships with suppliers, social performance and managing technical disruption. 4.0 is a digital transformation and Renault is doing very well with managing disruption.”
Brancard described four major breakthroughs driving digital transformation: a connected workforce, virtual training, data driven plant and supply chain management plus full track and trace.
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By GlobalDataHe added: “We now have full WiFi through our plants and 3,000 tablets have been distributed to team leaders and managers. Access to data means we can quickly carry out conditional and predictive maintenance based on historical data and algorithms.
“We can react, adjust and make decisions much more quickly which is important as is track and trace which, in terms of quality assurance, the auto industry has lagged behind others such as food.”
Pitesti rolls out a new Dacia every 54 seconds, using 7,000 staff and 800 robots.
Investment has gone into training and skills along with more automated processes.
Last year the plant produced 510,000 engines, 506,000 gearboxes, enough parts to make 751,000 cars of which 313,883 left the plant built-up and the rest in CKD packs for assembly elsewhere.
CEO Antoine Doucerain said Renault Group in Romania accounts for 3% of the country’s GDP and employs 17,000 people while its brands have a market share of more than 37%.
It has invested EUR2.8bn over the past 10 years and its factory, design, sales and research and development facilities are also the client for 1,500 suppliers.
It is a largely self contained operation starting with design, development and process engineering – there is also capability to make its own tooling.
The factory houses a stamping plant, engine and transmission shops – which also supply other group plants worldwide – and full assembly – Pitesti is also the mother plant of 16 satellite assembly operations worldwide.
Design and engineering functions are located in the capital Bucharest while research, development and testing are carried out at Titu, the only complete auto R&D centre in Eastern Europe and the biggest such Renault Group facility outside France.
On the site of a former military airfield, the centre opened in 2008 and works closely with Dacia design, styling, purchasing and sales operations in Romania.
In 2012 it was responsible for the renewal of the Dacia Global Access range (Logan and Sandero) and last year the redesigned Duster, currently being rolled out.
It occupies 350 hectares with 48,000sq m of buildings housing anechoic chambers, roller test beds, corrosion labs, endurance equipment, sunlight simulation, infrared chambers and powertrain software validation.
There is a 32km test track plus water, dust and gravel tunnels, off-road rock and hill climbs. There are also climate chambers which can lower temperatures to the most arctic of temperatures.
