Today's Wall Street Journal has a page-one article about Chrylser and its effort to disaggregate factories from automobiles.
Chrysler engineers discovered that the PT Cruiser was an inch too tall to fit through the [Belvidere, Illinois'] plant's paint shop. Chrysler, which was losing money at the time, ended up spending $300 million to expand the assembly line at the PT Cruiser plant in Toluca, Mexico.
Determined not to make such a mistake again, Chrysler rethought how it assembles cars, looking at everything from the order in which door parts are welded together to whether it's cheaper to install windshields manually or by machine. The result is a new, flexible assembly system that Chrysler is betting can transform the company's economics. Its central feature is the ability to make more than one type of vehicle at a plant.I'd bet on Chrysler; it's the right kind of innovation. Now, if only the PT Cruiser wasn't so ugly..
Topics: · manufacturing
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