DETROIT-- Big changes will continue on the plant floor in the Chrysler Group's North American assembly operations as the company expands lean manufacturing, and Canadian workers should embrace them, said president and CEO Tom LaSorda.
If Canadian autoworkers try to block Chrysler's efforts to match Toyota-style manufacturing efficiencies they will endanger their plant's competitiveness and put their jobs at risk, LaSorda said.
In the U.S., the United Auto Workers has agreed to the introduction of work teams at Chrysler's two Toledo, Ohio, plants, and in their truck plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. During contract bargaining last summer the CAW refused to entertain talk of work teams, which rotate assemblers through different jobs during the same day or week. Veteran workers consider team work a threat to preferred jobs they have won through decades of seniority.
LaSorda said most of Chrysler's Canadian workers are not attempting to block the changes, and it would be "in their best interests" to help the new systems work.
"They can call it whatever they want if they don't like the word team," he said of the few who might oppose the coming changes. "The issue is, people have to work together. We need to move into smart manufacturing and we want to do that in Canada.
"They're experimenting," he said of Chrysler's two Canadian plants. "They're going to pilot" -- meaning run test vehicles down the assembly lines again and again to find faster and more ergonomically sensible ways to build cars and trucks.
The widespread changes Chrysler is introducing to its American assembly plants include Japanese-lean manufacturing, European-style work teams and campuses of parts suppliers and subassemblers.
Between them, the workplace changes will totally transform Chrysler Group's efficiency, quality and profitability, LaSorda said. Since Dieter Zetsche took over the company in 2001, Chrysler's goal has been to match the best automakers in the business by 2007 in vehicle quality and plant efficiency.
"We're already doing it in Mexico," Lasorda said during an interview during Detroit's North American International Auto Show with Steven Landry, president of DaimlerChrysler Canada.
Chrysler's Mexican assembly plants even exceed Toyota's efficiency levels, he said.
Workers shouldn't be afraid of the changes, LaSorda said. They already exist in some form in every one of Chrysler's 30 assembly plants, including those in Windsor, Ont., and to a much larger extent, Brampton, Ont.
LaSorda said he doesn't decide how the workplace changes occur. "I don't get involved in it." He leaves the details to the managers of each plant and their local bargaining committees.
"Everyone's seen what's been done in Mexico -- these plants are absolutely competitive with Toyota. They can compete with any Toyota plant in the world. And we want to see the Canadian plants do something similar."
The issue of Chrysler becoming a modern manufacturing company that can beat the best in the world is not about Chrysler's unionized workforce, he said. "This isn't about the employees only. It's about management waking up and saying, let's treat the employees the way they should be treated I and let's recognize employees when they do a great job.
"Our eyesight cannot be 'what did GM do,' and 'what did Ford do.' We already know that. The people and the companies taking our jobs away are usually from Asia: Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai."
Chrysler is not yet capable of beating them in all its plants, LaSorda said. "I believe that we do not have an organizational structure or culture yet that embraces what needs to be done. Which means that the operator is at the top of pyramid and everybody else is there to support them.
"The day we get to that is the day they'll win. But it's management that usually screws this stuff up. Not the workforce."
--CanWest News Service
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