Stamping Strategy

If Chrysler Group has a winner with its latest product offerings, the company's modernized stamping operation should get at least some of the credit.

In 1990, the average age of its presses was 25.2 years and, if time had run its course, Chrysler's presses today would be closing in on 40.

Instead, Chrysler launched a capital-intensive revitalization plan in 1994 that has deeply cut stamping costs.

The auto maker has reduced the average age to 12 years and overall number of presses by some 36% since 1990, with specific concentration on cutting the number of small-piece presses from 32% to 21% of the total press mix, Chrysler Sterling (Heights, MI) Stamping Plant Manager Dean Hendrickson says at the recent AutoMan conference in Dearborn, MI.

He says the average age of Chrysler's presses now is the lowest of the Big Three and the total number of lines has been reduced 46%, from 123 to 67. Much of the age improvement comes from the addition of four new stamping satellites — Brampton, Ont., Canada; Belvidere, IL; Toluca, Mexico and Saltillo, Mexico — each installed to support local assembly operations and, consequently, reduce operating costs and commonize stamping operations in new facilities.

In addition, Chrysler modernized its stamping operations in Sterling Heights, MI; Twinsburg, OH; and Warren, MI; mostly focusing on installing tandem — double action lead — press lines and adding automatic presses to produce smaller stampings.

Thanks to a bump in extra-large capacity presses from 7% of Chrysler's press mix to 33% over the past decade, the auto maker has been able to cut the number of stamping lines it needs, reducing complexity and maintenance costs, while minimizing future capital investment.

The company now only stamps smaller parts in-house when the pieces are needed in extraordinarily large volumes; otherwise small pieces are outsourced.

Although Chrysler doesn't release its overall cost improvements, Hendrickson says over the last four years the amount of scrap costs per piece has been reduced 30%, while pieces per hour have jumped 40%.

The fact that die changeover times have fallen 53% — to as low as 7 minutes in Mexico — contributes greatly to Chrysler's increased productivity in an area of the industry best described as a “necessary evil.”

Now that the company has revitalized its presses, the next frontier is implementing lighter dies that enable more flexible changeovers and less-costly implementation.

The more flexible a die changeover operation becomes, the more likely a stamping line can accommodate lower-volume vehicle production — which Hendrickson says Chrysler must be prepared for as it implements its product strategy of populating fewer plants with more vehicles vs. devoting plants to single boom-or-bust products.

“High-volume days of a few vehicles are over,” he says.

So are high costs for dies, he says. One of the highest single costs of a new vehicle program is investment in lightweight dies. With newer, more technologically advanced presses, die investment is shrinking.

“There is no glamour in stamping, but it is an important part of the business,” Hendrickson says. In fact, stamping revitalization is credited in Chrysler's performance in the annual Harbour Report on manufacturing productivity. “Heavy investments in the stamping operations over the last few years are starting to pay off in the results seen in productivity for Chrysler Group,” Harbour Consulting said in the 2002 report.

This year, Chrysler continued its improvement, posting a 7.8% productivity surge to 37.42 assembly hours per vehicle made, which is nearly 20% better than 1998 and better than Ford Motor Co. for the first time in 15 years. Harbour again credited stamping for making a contribution.

Cost-effective stamping operations also free capital to invest in product development.

“(Stamping) has a direct impact on Chrysler Group's core business (of) building great cars and trucks,” Hendrickson says, especially on speed-to-market, quality, cost, design and safety of vehicles. Current vehicles, such as Stow 'n Go-equipped minivans and 300 Series sedans, are direct recipients of investment that would have gone into updating aged presses and fixing stamping-related quality glitches.