Flexibility reigns: Honda's Global Manufacturing System means faster-to-market lower volume vehicles - Manufacturing Roundup

When you talk about North American manufacturing, you can't help but talk about Honda They seem to be where everyone else wants to be. But just when the others come close to grabbing that golden ring. Honda moves it higher. The 20-year-old Marysville. Ohio. plant is the first of Honda's North American manufacturing facilities and the last to come on line with Honda's Global Manufacturing System. The new system, which started in 2000 with the global launch of the '01 Civic. standardizes all of Honda's plants worldwide. With the increased flexibility both Marysville and neighboring East Liberty can build any small-size to mid-size model, making it easy to adjust vehicle mix or introduce new models to the facilities. The ultimate goal is to reduce the new product cycle from four years to about two-and-a-half, cuffing investment costs by as much as 50 percent,

When work began in early 2000 Honda Corporate gave them two mandates. There could be no interruption in production and no expansion of the 3.5 million sq.ft. facility unless absolutely necessary.

The first major task was the installation of four new major welding zones. Project Leader Randy Shiplett says that the team used what they called a "build-and-scrap" approach. The new floor-component system for line one was installed in what had been a material service area. Then the old line one floor-component system was torn out and the new line one car body weld system was installed.

The new weld lines are essential to Honda's flexible manufacturing system, replacing dedicated hydraulic machines with electric robots that can be programmed to do several different tasks. Honda Engineering of Japan designs and manufactures the robots as well as a new electro-servo welding gun that mounts to the robotic arms. The new guns are more accurate and can be programmed for shorter cycle times, Engineers from Marysville helped redesign the new gun with the coolant tubes on the inside, making them less prone to damage. Honda has adopted this design for all of its facilities.

Another key strategy of the global manufacturing system was the installation of five quality assurance areas where each vehicle is thoroughly inspected, Problems can be found early to save on the time and extra work to tear down a car to get to something that was done in the early phase of assembly, Adding the Quality Assurance areas required lengthening the assembly line by 400 ft., or about 23 car-lengths per station.

While all of this major construction was going on. other improvements were being made as well. The instrument panel sub-assembly was consolidated into one area, and bumper painting for both Honda and Acura is now done in a new 80,000 sq.ft. addition. This allowed Honda to go from three shifts to two, and through the use of a new primer and clear coat process, final production time was cut by 18 minutes.

The old Acura bumper painting shop is now a materials handling area for welding.

Getting parts into the plant is another area of concern. Initially Marysville was designed to have all parts flow in from the east-side of the plant. To ease up on floor traffic, door sub-assembly parts are now delivered from the north and Shiplett says that more delivery areas will be added to move the delivery of parts closer to their sub-assembly areas.

Tim Downing, Accord engineering project leader, says the next big project will be to tear out welding line number two as soon as the current Acura TL reaches the end of the model run. He doesn't know yet what they'll do with the open space, but he suggests that it might be used to consolidate the door, hood and deck lid finishing areas. There are also plans to make changes to the main paint line. Currently, paint color is changed every 30 cars and Downing says that they would like to get that number down.

Honda will get the first real test of its flexible manufacturing system this December, when the tall, boxy Element life-style vehicle runs down the same line as Civic. Since Honda plans on building just 30,000 Elements a year, high-volume manufacturer East Liberty now becomes a niche-vehicle manufacturer as well. With the new common global footprint, Accord production will now be spread out over plants in China, Thailand, Mexico and Japan. It's the first time Accord's have been built outside the U.S. in four years. That would free up capacity at Marysville. Industry insiders tell us that Honda has a unibody mid-size lifestyle pickup slated for 2005. Could the new beefed-up adjustable assembly carriers at Marysville be a hint of things to come?

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