The World Class Manufacturing Academy was built for an undisclosed sum in the Technology Training Center run jointly by the automaker and the UAW.
Chrysler adopted Fiat’s award-winning manufacturing system shortly after exiting bankruptcy in 2009. Based on the principle of eliminating waste of any kind, the system relies on the input of line workers to suggest ways to improve their jobs and their plants. To date, Chrysler workers have made over 200,000 suggestions, most of which were implemented, Chrysler officials said.
The system relies on regular audits that boil down a plant’s efficiency to a two digit score. The audits include not just plant output, but also worker and plant safety, product quality, plant waste, and job interactions.
A score of 50 or above is recognized as bronze, 60 is silver, and 70 is gold, and 85 is world class.
“The only way for us to get better is to build skills, and this is the place to build skills,” said Scott Garberding, Chrysler’s head of manufacturing.
The automaker’s manufacturing and assembly plants are in a race of sorts to reach bronze status this year. According to plant level officials, Chrysler Group’s plants in Windsor, Ont., Toledo, Ohio, Dundee, Mich., and Belvidere, Ill., are all close to reaching bronze level. If they do so this year, they will have accomplished the feat in just over half the time it took their counterparts in Europe.
In their initial audits in 2009, some of those plants had single-digit W.C.M. scores.
UAW members have embraced Fiat’s system because they realize that better quality and greater efficiency is the best job security, said General Holiefield, head of the UAW’s Chrysler department.
“It’s a culture in each facility,” Holiefield said, talking about how clean and efficient Fiat’s European factories were. “It’s very magical.”
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