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Automotive Industry

The smart way of building cars

Automotive Design & Production, April, 2004 by William Kimberley

The SMART brand means little to most people in North America unless they have a particular interest in vehicles that are rolling around in Europe but which are unavailable in the North American market. This is about to change, as SMART will come to Detroit in 2006 with the launch of an SUV that is named the "formore." There is a whole different nomenclature in the world of SMART, one predicated on descriptive names, like the two-seaters being called "fortwo" and the four-place as the "Forfour." SMART is so young it will be celebrating only its 10th birthday in this month. Originally the brainchild of Nicolas Hayek, the creator of Swatch, the Swiss watch manufacturer, and Mercedes-Benz, the idea was to produce a small car that was as ecologically sound as possible. Designed for congested city centers, it was to be compact, lightweight and propelled by a small, low-powered engine. A joint venture company was subsequently set up between the two companies, although the-then-Daimler-Benz acquired full possession in January 1999.

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The first models attracted a great deal of interest both for their unusual looks as well as for their driving dynamics. With a length and width of just 2,500 mm and 1,515 mm, respectively, the two-seater SMART city was extremely compact; its 3-cylinder 599-cc supercharged engine developing, just 45 bhp, was mated to an innovative 6-speed automated manual gearbox. However, the real interest was in the manufacturing plant and processes.

Completed in October 1997, the so-called SMARTVILLE production plant, located near the small town of Hambach on the French side of the Franco-German border, is one of the most modern car plants in the world. When under construction, the impact it might have on the environment featured so high on the list of things to do that it was considered "ungreen" to install any air conditioning systems on the site--despite it being built on former swampland. Like many modern buildings, it has a large number of windows. None of the buildings contain formaldehyde or CFCs. In keeping with the environmental theme there's high-quality wood-based facade cladding provided by specialist company Trespa Meteon. Heat recovery systems are used throughout the factory. The heat generated by air leaving the paint department and by the injection molding section is taken through a rotating heat recovery system that also has the side benefit of eliminating the need for cooling towers.

Rainwater that runs from the roofs of the buildings is retained in reservoirs for use in tempering steel; all the other waste water that drains off the roads and car parks is fed into the oil separation plants, treated in storage basins, and is used for specific purposes. All the wastewater from the plant's sanitary installations and industrial processes is purified in a centrally located biological clarification plant using biomembranes that clean waste through a filtration system to strict European drinking water standards. After purification, the water is used in the gardens and as a coolant during the production process.

The chassis is painted using a solvent-free powder coating technique--SMART was the first to use it--that, apart from its ecological soundness, produces a higher quality finish than conventional methods despite the thinner coat.

For all this environmental awareness; though, even this is not the most revolutionary aspect of the SMART production system--that falls to the arrangements with the suppliers. Just about everything in SMARTVILLE is outsourced, from the smallest component on the assembly line to delivering cars to dealers in Europe and Japan. Of the 2,200 people who work at the plant, only around 900 are actually employed by DaimlerChrysler; the rest work for the seven suppliers on site. However, "on site" does not mean just the adjacent supplier park, but actually integrated into the manufacturing infrastructure. These seven companies--Magna Systeme Chassis (the spaceframe), Magna Unipart (doors), Surtema Eisenmann (the paint shop), Dynamit Nobel (plastic body panels), Siemens VDO (cockpit), ThyssenKrupp Automotive (powertrain and rear axle), and Cubic Europe (surface decoration)--supply their modules, which are pre-constructed in Hambach, directly to the production line. By paying for the system or module only when the completed car comes off the assembly line having passed all the end-of-line tests is payment--"paying after consumption"--authorized to the supplier. This, of course, reduces SMART'S inventory almost to zero.

"We decided to give some of the work usually done by the OEMs to our sister partners because of their know-how as well as for cost reasons with the volume we are producing here," says Herbert Schnepper, the SMARTVILLE'S general manager. "It's a very successful philosophy that has been implemented here. At first we had doubts whether the system could work because we're operating together with several partners, and that could produce some problems. However, we have monthly meetings with the heads of all the enterprises where we discuss both the operational and strategic way of doing things here and it works very well."

Automotive Industry

The smart way of building cars

Automotive Design & Production, April, 2004 by William Kimberley

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