From nought to one hundred in six months

Our customer, General Motors (GM) has been running production sites in Poland since 1998 where labour costs are relatively low. MAN Ferrostaal has also been in Poland since 1999, assisting GM in scheduling and assembling over 300 different modules, from cooling systems and spring struts to rear axles. When GM wanted to move new models to Poland, but wanted to avoid large investments for expanding its own production, they approached MAN Ferrostaal: "Can you set up the sequencing and assembly of a further 100 modules in six months, put them in operation and deliver us 'just-in-sequencing' with production continuing as usual?"

Naturally, we agreed, even if the extremely short timescale posed considerable challenges and a risk as well. On top of that a sufficiently large building needed to be renovated. Fortunately there was one in the vicinity of the GM plant: a 70 year-old, 13,000 square metre large which used to be used as tank factory.

Project management was under pressure: Those were six months that our employees won’t forget so soon. Project management was under extreme pressure. We renovated the hall, created a traffic infrastructure using private and public roads, erected assembly lines and installed the IT system to establish the connection with our existing operation. We set up a transport chain for delivering MAN vehicles to customers, developed and built 500 transportation racks, recruited and trained 400 new employees and started operating the sequencing and assembly of 100 new modules. We started supplying GM under ongoing production with over 70.000 new modules per day right on time.