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Vol 32 - No 06 - September 2006 Branch news : Midlands - Visit to Jaguar XK Assembly operation I can remember the day when my Dad brought home a brand new Jaguar Mk10 and took us out for a picnic. We parked the car in the entrance to a field, laid out the blanket and enjoyed an idyllic summer picnic. My street cred was considerably enhanced by being able to say “my dad’s got a Jaguar”….. 40 years later and now I own a Jaguar and get a real buzz whenever I drive it. Jaguar is one of the few survivors of the British car industry and I wince when enthusiasts say ‘they don’t make them like they used to!’ or ‘it is not a real Jaguar anymore’. The survival and resurgence of Jaguar is due to significant investment by Ford in the development of a high quality product and investment in a once derelict plant which previously built Spitfires during WW2 and various Austin, British Leyland and Rover cars up to the SD1 in the early 1980s. Now the Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich is the only UK car plant currently volume producing aluminium bodied cars (the XJ and XK). All structural jointing is by riveting and gluing, with very little welding used and then only for cosmetic seam concealment. The cars are predominantly for export, in particular to the US market, where during the past 15 years car produced at the plant have progressed from very poor ratings for quality and reliability to best in class. Earlier this year the plant was assessed as the leanest plant within Ford worldwide. So how is this claim justified? The factory is organised into four sections of the XK production line; from body-in-white assembly through to rolling road and water test are housed in one building. The body shells only leave and return to go to the paint shop. The production line is divided into cells of seven to eight operators, each with a team leader. Every two weeks the team rotates as a group to a different cell on the production line, in order to provide a fully flexible workforce. There are high levels of autonomy in the production teams; a key ingredient in lean thinking. As we progressed around the production lines we noted excellent use was made of Visual Management, as you would expect in most automotive plants, but clearly used on a shift basis within each cell for concern-raising and tracking, output and quality monitoring. Lean is keen on simplicity and the use of the Single-point lessons: simple visuals laminated A4 means of transferring consistent knowledge including basic skills, process improvements and troubleshooting was a clear example. A quality car comes with the expectation that it will be ‘personal’ and Lean Manufacturing is employed to meet the customers’ demand. All cars are made to order and the body shells carry a bar-coded VIN number, which carries all of the specific options for that car. Human readable data is very limited. The cars are sequenced by due date – all aspects of Jaguars assembly operation is based on a batch size of one and sequenced line-side supply of the customer options. In the early stages of manufacture in the body-in-white operation Kanban stillages determine the supply batch size. Later on components for the final assembly operations are marshalled onto trolleys (one for the left and one for the right side of each car). When the car reaches the end of each section both trolleys should be empty! The supply co-ordination and provision of third party components JIT to the line is outsourced to Excel logistics – effectively they schedule the suppliers and get the parts to the line-side in the right sequence for each car. The feeling in the factory was one of purpose, organisation and pride. Seen in the raw XK Jaguar is as exciting during manufacturing as it is in the showroom or on the road. Geoff Relph, FIOM & Kevin Tamkin, MIOM Related Topics:
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