New chief: Lordstown can be No. 1

The new leader wants substantial improvements in productivity.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
LORDSTOWN -- A new plant manager wants to make Lordstown Assembly Plant the best older assembly plant in the country.
"I want to set the benchmark," said Maureen Midgley, who becomes plant manager April 1.
She wants the plant to have the best productivity, quality, management systems and team empowerment. She said she can't say yet how the plant will get there.
"That's what our next planning session will be," she said.
Herman Maass, who has been plant manager since 1996, announced last week that he is retiring. Midgley has been assistant plant manager since 1999.
As Lordstown improves, it can't be judged against assembly plants that have been built recently, she said. Designing a plant from scratch has allowed some automakers to give those plants advantages in modern production methods, she said.
Improvements considered: General Motors is considering giving Lordstown some of those advantages by spending about $500 million to renovate the plant. Midgley said she wants dramatic improvement in the plant even before then.
A key figure she will be looking at is the average number of hours it takes to build a car, which measures productivity.
In 1999, Harbour & amp; Associates, a Michigan consulting firm, ranked Lordstown 28th in productivity out of 39 car assembly plants in North America with an average of 28.5 hours per car. Maass has said the plant averaged 25.1 hours per car last year, although Harbour's rankings haven't come out.
Midgley said the plant now is averaging between 23 and 24 hours per car but she wants to get the number under 20. She said she thinks the plant can achieve that level even before the plant renovation, but she declined to set an exact time frame.
She said she also will be closely watching the plant's average manufacturing cost per car. She said she didn't want to talk about specific numbers but the industry is forcing all plants to reduce those costs.
Learned from predecessor: She called the work of cutting costs painful, but necessary. She said the greatest skill she observed in Maass was in working with the union to achieve cost reductions that were controversial. Maass was able to keep working with the union to find a way for both sides to achieve favorable results, she said.
"If anyone loses, everyone loses," she said.
Midgley described her management style as assembling a diverse team and helping members join into a cohesive unit. She said she adds a little bit of humor and a lot of energy to the group.
"I don't dictate decisions, but I push for them to made in a timely manner," she said.
She said being the first woman plant manager at Lordstown isn't significant to her because the responsibility of the task is daunting enough in itself. Nearly 5,000 hourly and salaried employees work at the plant, which is the largest single-line auto production plant in North America.
She said the key issue before the plant is receiving a new model to replace the current Chevrolet Cavaliers and Pontiac Sunfires that are built there. GM said last year that it wanted to replace them in 2004, but Midgley said it could happen anywhere from 2003 to 2007.
GM is negotiating financial incentives with the state and is working internally on design and marketing issues, she said. While the review is continuing, the plant must do its part by continuing to improve its productivity and quality, she said.