SIA gets $75M expansion

From Left Lane News:

As we expected, Subaru has confirmed that it will expand its Lafayette, Indiana, plant as part of its greater focus on the North American market.

 

The $75 million project will see production capacity of the Outback and Legacy models increase, while up to 100 new jobs will be created by the end of 2014. The expansion should also allow building about 24,000 extra vehicles, a boost of about 15 percent over current levels.

 

More importantly, it should allow the plant to boost annual production to 180,000 vehicles annually without overtime. Last year, the factory made about 171,000 cars but required overtime hours to do so. The plan is to add 52,000 square feet to the production facility.

 

...

...and still no Legacy GT

No GT is sad, but 100 new jobs sounds wonderfull. It's nice to see a foreign company keeping major production in the US. A lot of people still need the work. I hope our great nation sees more companies expanding like this.

That's a lot of cars!

 

while reading the article I thought 'wow, how many cars are being fully built each and every day if the plant was open 365 days a year'.... it's practically 500 cars a day!!

good news.

From Left Lane http://news:

 

This is great news because overtime causes several problems; lower quality, higher workers accident rates, decreased productivity, lower efficiencies, etc. I can imagine some employees are complaining about losing over time though.

I have a couple HS classmates who work at SIA. Overtime was mandatory until the tsunami hit Japan and knocked out parts suppliers. No factory can build quality products with overtime imposed for more than short stretches of time. They had been working somewhere around a full year of OT when the tsumai forced a reduction in production volume.

I have a couple HS classmates who work at SIA. Overtime was mandatory until the tsunami hit Japan and knocked out parts suppliers. No factory can build quality products with overtime imposed for more than short stretches of time. They had been working somewhere around a full year of OT when the tsumai forced a reduction in production volume.

 

They probably welcome the addition to reduce the ot then. Forced overtime gets draining. I've managed in plants where ot was forced and saw the negative feedback. Some employees enjoy it though. Lower paid employees enjoy the added financial boost of ot. I'd think the Subaru employees are fairly well compensated and don't need ot to get by.

The numbers don't lie; Subaru has a couple of winners in the current generation of Legacy and Outback. Hopefully this volume will allow them to bring back an even better GT and diesel option.

The numbers don't lie; Subaru has a couple of winners in the current generation of Legacy and Outback. Hopefully this volume will allow them to bring back an even better GT and diesel option.

 

One minus to the success is more cars like ours on the streets. Loss of exclusivity...

Also: Subaru parent considering new U.S. plant by ’15

For even greater efficiency, they should just merge the Legacy and Camry models into one vehicle, since they're pretty close anyway.