All but four of Chrysler’s assembly plants improved their productivity in 2005 in terms of the number of labour hours it takes to produce a vehicle, according to the Harbour Report North America 2006. The labour hours per vehicle (HPV) measure the total salary and hourly labour content required to produce one vehicle.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Five Chrysler plants registered productivity gains of more than 5% – Brampton, Ont, Jefferson North, Toledo South, Toluca, Mex, and Windsor.
General Motors had five of the 10 most productive assembly plants at Oshawa (16.08 HPV for Pontiac Grand Prix, Buick Lacrosse and Allure), Fairfax, Kan (17.62 HPV for Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx), Lansing M (17.82 HPV), which closed in 2005 after building out the Pontiac Grand Am and Chevrolet Malibu Classic, Oshawa (17.91 HPV for Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo), and Spring Hill, Tenn (18.34 HPV for Saturn ION).
GM plans to idle Spring Hill car production at the end of 2006 and idle Oshawa when it builds out the current models in 2008.
Nissan had three assembly lines in the top 10 – the Altima lines in Smyrna, Tenn (16.90 HPV), and Canton, Miss (17.73 HPV), and the Frontier pickup truck line in Smyrna (18.17 HPV). Nissan also led with the most productive assembly performance in four of eight vehicle segments in which they compete – large car (Maxima), full-size SUV (Armada), mid-size SUV (Pathfinder) and small pickup (Frontier).
Toyota’s Georgetown plant, which produces the Camry and Solara, ranked eighth at 18.08 HPV. Overall, Toyota’s assembly performance was flat year- over-year, excluding the two lines at Princeton, Ind. When Princeton is included, Toyota’s hours per vehicle degraded by 9.6%. Nonetheless, Toyota’s North American production volume is growing so fast it needs the equivalent of one new assembly plant of capacity to meet demand.
