More of Cobalt's parts being made here

Plant and union officials would be happy for GM to send even more work.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
LORDSTOWN -- The Chevrolet Cobalt is a hometown car now more than ever.
More of the car's metal parts are being stamped by presses at General Motors' Lordstown complex because of improvements made at the fabricating plant.
Not all of the car's underbody parts could be produced in Lordstown when the Cobalt was launched in 2004 because the presses didn't have the capacity for them, said John Donahoe, complex manager.
The fabricating plant has improved its productivity so much recently, however, that more work could be added, he said.
Four parts that had been made at other GM plants and by outside suppliers recently have been moved to Lordstown. They include parts for the engine compartment and underbody.
Production went up 14 percent over the past six months of 2005, when the fabricating plant won a production award from GM for two straight quarters. It was the first time the plant won the quarterly Manager's Manufacturing Council Award.
Work teams
Jim Kaster, president of United Auto Workers Local 1714 at the fabricating plant, said the creation of work teams has led to the right environment to increase productivity.
Workers now rotate among jobs in a given area, which keeps them fresh, he said. Also, each team member inspects the quality of the product, instead of relying on just one person, he said.
A labor contract that created the teams also reduced job classifications. Kaster said that having team members working together has reduced the time needed to change the stamping equipment on the presses from about 45 minutes to about six minutes.
Decreasing production bottlenecks also has helped productivity, Donahoe said. With teams working to create solutions for line stoppages, the line is running more often, he said.
Donahoe, who was named to his post last year, is part of the reason plant operations have improved, said Jim Graham, president of UAW Local 1112 at the assembly plant. Donahoe spends most of his day on the plant floor, listening to workers' input on how jobs can be done better, Graham said.
"He works out the problems. We needed someone who was really concerned with the people on the line," Graham said.
Some of the Cobalt's metal parts still are produced outside Lordstown, due in part to the plant's presses' not being designed to make certain parts, Donahoe said.
Metal parts aren't the only new things coming to Lordstown.
New model coming
GM announced last week that it will produce a new model -- the Pontiac G5 -- at the plant. The car will be similar to the Cobalt and built on the same underbody.
It is based on the Pontiac Pursuit, which the Lordstown plant builds for the Canadian market. Lordstown also produces a sister car of the Cobalt, the Pontiac G4, for Mexico.
Donahoe said Lordstown received the additional work because of the safety, quality and cost numbers it has posted. The plant hasn't missed its daily schedule of producing 1,296 cars since early October, he said. "People notice that in Detroit," he added.
GM estimates that the G5 will add between 20,000 and 25,000 units of production to the plant, but it will take away about 5,000 from Cobalt sales, he said. The plant produced 301,000 Cobalts last year.
Donahoe said the plant will handle the additional work by scheduling Saturday overtime when needed. Production of the G5 is expected to start this summer.
GM had been considering moving production of the Saturn Ion to Lordstown, but that model is being phased out, Donahoe said.
Both he and the union officials said they would love the challenge of building an additional model besides the G5. None of them wanted to put a limit on production capacity, noting that the plant used to produce more than 1,500 cars a day when it had considerably more employees than the 6,000 who work there now.
"That would be a good question to be asked by Detroit, 'How much can you produce?''' Donahoe said.
shilling@vindy.com