News From the Auto Industry

Located just east of the I-75 expressway, the facility will enable C-P-C to centralize some of the work that is normally scattered out among engineers at corporate headquarters, the GM Technical Center in Warren, Mich., the group’s engine production plants, and outside engineering service and prototype shops.

That word, of course, sounds rather, well, futuristic. And in some regards, Oshawa can be considered a vision of the future that General Motors once had. In 1988, the plant was undoubtedly hailed as part of GM’s bold move into the realm of seriously high technology manufacturing. For example, in the two car assembly body shops, there are 160 automated guided vehicles (AGVs) rolling through the plant carrying cars-in-becoming. There are no traditional conveyor lines. There are some overhead electrified monorail systems. But the floor-based systems follow wires embedded in the floor, they don’t get tugged along by chains. Imagine how that must have looked back then, when the AGVs were shiny new and not showing the scratched decals and other signs of handling hundreds of thousands of vehicles through the years. (There are also AGVs in the truck plant. And, yes, an abundance of robots in both.)

The plant, which is believed to contain around 120,000 square feet of floor space, and is expandable to more than twice its present size, also will be used to some degree to test new manufacturing methods associated with engines. A great deal of new boring, milling, drilling, grinding, rolling, turning, deburring and measuring equipment will be required in the new facility, possibly along with some new concepts in head changing and material handling vehicles.

The new engines will be produced in at least two displacement sizes, and will, join GM’s existing 3.5-liter “Premium V-6″ engines as the only all-aluminum V-shaped six-cylinder engine lines produced in North America. GM will add a 3.7-liter unit to the Premium V-6 product family, so there will be at least four aluminum V-6 engines available to GM’s car buyers after 2003.

Less Than Ideal. According to Eric Stevens, plant manager for the Oshawa Car Assembly operations, the AGVs are a less-than-ideal approach to assembly, especially in the type of lean environment that they are promulgating in Oshawa. Part of the problem is that they’re looking for shorter takt times, not longer, yet because of the nature of the AGVs (e.g., independent vehicles which are finite in number), the takt time is on the order of four minutes, not less than one. Consequently, AGVs drive the need for parallel processes, which can lead to problems with regard to quality and repeatability.

Perhaps as much as two thirds of the aluminum castings content in the High-Feature V-6s will come iron Mexico, the GM sources said, but U.S.-based materials suppliers are expected to furnish much of the scrap and finished specification metal for, the castings. One of the Mexican parts manufacturers involved in the program will be Castech SA, a joint venture between Mexico’s Grupo Industrial Saltillo and Europe’s VAW Aluminium AG. Castech will furnish some or all of the heads and blocks, at least for the initial production program.

Yet for all that, they are doing some rather remarkable things throughout the Autoplex. For example, long takt times notwithstanding, in the category of hours per vehicle excluding launch for full-size trucks in the 2000 Harbour Report, GM Oshawa is best, with 21.74 hours per vehicle. Ford’s Norfolk plant came in second, at 21.77 vehicles. It is worth taking into account that the actual production at Oshawa was 323,034; it was 230,628 at Norfolk. Ohawa Car Plant 1, where the Chevrolets are built, was the best GM car assembly plant with regard to hours per vehicle in the Harbour Report (third overall in North America).

Oshawa is called an “Autoplex.”

Two or three years after the engines are in circulation, the company is expected to enter the second phase of production, which could involve another 600,000 engines annually, pushing the total secondary aluminum casting alloy requirements for the V-6s to as high as 200 million pounds a year. Few aluminum engine programs “anywhere in the world consume as much light casting alloy as that.