Automakers Get Back to Work—but Not Back to Business as Usual - Autoweek

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Every year in late June and early July, Detroit automakers take a two-week pause to maintain facilities and re-tool for new production. This so-called summer shutdown is an annual tradition—part of the rhythm of life in the manufacturing-intensive Midwest.

But not this year. General Motors is keeping the majority of its plants running through the typical shutdown period; Ford plans to idle some facilities for one week rather than the typical two. Depending on anticipated demand, Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles might follow suit. It’s all part of an effort to make up for time lost to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered some plants and repurposed others to produce vital medical supplies. Those working the lines can expect a comprehensive battery of protocols and screening procedures intended to prevent the virus from spreading.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz USA’s headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia—an impressive, modern campus that opened a little over two years ago—sits all but empty. The nearly 900 employees working at the facility have been directed to do their jobs from home at least through the end of 2020. As with the testing and safety procedures implemented on the assembly lines, no end date for this work-from-home situation has been announced.

“The new normal” is an uncomfortable and overused phrase. As automakers get back to the business of building cars, however, it’s clear they aren’t heading back to business as usual. And while it’s uncertain how many changes adopted by all facets of the industry—from the assembly line to corporate headquarters—turnout to be permanent, automakers aren’t treating them as stopgap measures. Expect medical data-driven social distancing, an emphasis on screening and personal protective gear and even work-from-home orders to be the norm until after the numbers say otherwise.

A Punctuated Restart

It’s tempting to call Ford’s production restart a bit rocky. Since May 18, the day production ramped up again, the company has had to temporarily stop production at its Transit van plant in Kansas City, Missouri, its Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant and an assembly plant in Chicago, each due to workers testing positive for coronavirus.

If you were to call the start rocky, though, Ford chief manufacturing and labor affairs officer Gary Johnson would take exception. “We are in day 8 with 21 plants running,” Johnson told Autoweek in late May, “and everything is on pace. I’ve been in 11 plants so far and I’m going to more. So far I’m impressed. The feedback on the precautions we’ve taken—masks, shields, safety glasses, hand sanitizer everywhere—has been really positive.”

Charlotte Smith/Ford Motor Co.

Ensuring worker safety is only part of the equation; the complexity of the global supply chains upon which all modern automakers rely represents a particularly acute vulnerability in this time of great uncertainty.

The Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, where GLE- and GLS-Class SUVs and the C-Class sedan are built, re-opened on April 27—notably earlier than Detroit’s automakers. It then had to shut down once again because it couldn’t get the parts it needed to continue production.

Still, automakers are doing the best they can given the circumstances. They have no choice.

What remains to be seen is how the inherently complex process of mass-producing cars fares when closed factories—or closed borders—could throw a wrench in the works at a moment’s notice.

“There are no guarantees in life—I don’t think anybody would have, six months ago, forecasted a pandemic…at least most people wouldn’t have,” Phil Kienle, General Motors vice president of manufacturing and labor relations, tells Autoweek. “What we’ve done is, we’ve pressure-tested the supply chain. And we start up operations when we have a reasonable confidence level that they can support us. Now, if I have a key supplier that has COVID cases and needs to shut down, I can’t predict that, nor can I necessarily plan for that. But if I wanted zero risk, we’d never start up.

We've pressure-tested the supply chain and have a reasonable confidence level it can support us.

“That said, we are very comfortable with where our suppliers and supply chain is at, and that’s (how we’re) gauging our startup plans.” Kienle adds that GM has “leveraged our safety protocols and shared those with all of our supply base. We’re confident that, if they adhere to those, that they’re going to have similar success to what we’ve had.

“Now, geopolitical influences outside of that are outside of our control, but we feel comfortable with the schedule we have. If something comes up, we’ll react accordingly.”

New Safety Protocols

In early May, Bugatti’s Molsheim, France, facility restarted production after a six-week pause. This boutique builder of ultra-high-end hypercars for the elite getting back to work was heartening news for enthusiasts, but in some regards it had it easier than the major players.

After all, it’s one thing to implement social distancing in a small, surgically clean and atelier-like shop with only a handful of employees. It’s another to do so in a massive factory with hundreds or thousands of employees. Yet that’s exactly what American production facilities have done.

“Our priority in bringing our operations back is the health and safety of our workforce,” Kienle tells us. “We spent a significant amount of time developing those protocols, and probably more importantly, making sure that the workforce understands them and can fully implement them as they come back.”

Bugatti’s Molsheim, France, facility restarted production in early May

Bugatti

Getting employee buy-in for these protocols is crucial. “We’re very pleased with the results that we’ve had so far in terms of the plants and the shifts that we have brought back—we haven’t had any issues. In most cases we hear comments like, ‘I feel safer here than at the grocery store or anywhere else out in public.’” That goes a long way to making sure the operations can then ramp up, safely.

Johnson tells Autoweek that Ford’s precautions include adding time between shifts to limit interaction between people and to allow for more cleaning. Workspaces have been modified so people can social distance and every employee is receiving PPE to wear inside a Ford building.

Further, Ford’s cafeterias and fitness centers are staying closed for now, while Johnson added the company is conducting daily online health self-certifications, completed before work every day, as well as no-touch temperature scans once workers arrive at a facility. Obviously anyone with a raised temperature isn’t allowed in the plant and is instructed to visit a doctor to be cleared before returning to work. Anybody even hinting they might have symptoms or might have been exposed to the virus is told not to come to work.

In most cases we hear comments like, ‘I feel safer here than at the grocery store.’

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles declined an interview opportunity, but it has publicly outlined the extensive protection measures it put in place before its May 18 restart. Like Ford and GM, there’s an emphasis on proactive testing and persistently using protective gear on the assembly floor—and a stepped-up sanitation schedule for facilities and equipment.

“Upon the restart of production, FCA is adopting a new level of daily cleaning and disinfecting, in accordance with WHO, CDC and OSHA recommendations, at all manufacturing locations in order to maintain the enhanced levels of cleanliness and sanitation. In addition to increasing the number of times per shift that high-traffic, high-use areas, as well as common touchpoints, are cleaned and disinfected, 10 minutes per shift will be dedicated to cleaning and disinfecting employee workstations,” FCA says.

FCA US LLC

“There is no question that coming to work will look and feel different,” FCA CEO Mike Manley said in a statement.

Learning on the Fly

If coronavirus caught you off-guard, you can take some small consolation knowing you weren’t alone. “We have emergency response plans at all of our facilities that will account for a lot of different scenarios,” Kienle says of GM’s reaction to the widespread, systemic impact of the disease. “A pandemic of this scale? No, we didn’t include that in our original plans. But those (smaller-scale response plans) formed the basis of what we evolved from.”

The somewhat staggered nature of the pandemic’s global spread did give global companies like GM a modest lead when it came to making preparations for U.S. facilities, however. “This started in China, and then Korea. We have operations in both of those countries, and so we had the advantage of learning what was done in those countries—what our facilities did, what worked and what didn’t work,” Kienle says. “We used that as a head start in beefing up our plans, and then tried to take it to the next level in terms of communicating with our workforce, making sure they understood the whats and the whys and genuinely felt that these measures would protect them.”

It’s proved effective, so far. “To date, we haven’t had a case of an employee-to-employee transmission at GM,” Kienle says. “The protocols are designed to catch it coming in, and then keep it out—sort of like a firewall, if you will.”

We had the advantage of learning what was done in those countries—what worked and what didn’t.

GM has, in turn, passed its learnings on to suppliers. “For the most part, they’re as eager, if not more eager, and very appreciative of what we’ve shared with them,” Kienle says. “And it’s a two-way street—we can always learn from the supply base as well. But they’ve been extremely cooperative, like they always are.”

Like Kienle, Johnson says the precautions and standards Ford put in place for the May 18 restart were based on those Ford used in its facilities in China. Additional knowledge came from plants in the U.S., where the automaker has been manufacturing medical equipment for weeks. He also said the company is working with experts in the medical field to help protect Ford’s employees.

No End in Sight

One striking aspect of automakers’ responses to coronavirus is their unwillingness to attach a timetable or sunset date for the new protocols and procedures. These aren’t expedient, band-aid fixes: Expect them to be the status quo until well after public health officials give a stand-down order. Some might well continue, in whole or in part, in perpetuity. It’s simply too soon to say.

FCA US LLC

Outside of temperature checks, sanitizing stations and PPE on the assembly lines, Mercedes’ work-from-home order for its U.S. headquarters employees is one of the most dramatic examples of this. A statement a Mercedes spokesman shared with Autoweek reads, in part:

“We demonstrated that we can successfully maintain our business and serve our dealers remotely. This moment in time provides a unique opportunity to shape how we work, finding creative way to meet the needs of individuals and better serve the requirements of our day-to-day operations. We are confident that our remote work arrangement will foster new ways to collaborate and ideate, while providing personal flexibility to our employees.

“With regard to timeframe, this is currently a trial plan for the organization through the end of the year (we have not yet determined an end date).”

Whether full or partial work-from-home protocols for office employees remain in effect after coronavirus passes is a question far larger in scope than just the automotive industry. On the assembly lines, workers are already adjusting to what will be their reality for the foreseeable future.

“It’s totally open-ended. There’s no end date on this; the data will speak to that,” Kienle tells us. “We don’t want to give people false impressions of, by X date we’re out of this. We might be out of it before then, it might be afterwards. But we’re going to let the data tell us when we can potentially shift gears.

“And I think a lot of this is going to be our new norm going forward. How much of it sticks forever is debatable, but I think some of the protocols we have in place will be here for the long term.”

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