Saarlouis

Following a highly successful press plant design and build project for a major OEM in Brazil, Stadco was approached to define a concept for a green field site where the customer needed to simplify and streamline their own internal manufacturing process by outsourcing significant elements of the sub assembly of the body structure.

Using Stadco staff from the previous build project and local knowledge, a concept layout was created and a feasibility programme was established. The concept was simple – create a highly automated and flexible production facility designed to meet the requirement to supply high level body in white subassemblies on a just in time basis for the Ford Focus range of vehicles.

During the development of this facility Stadco utilised its experienced engineering personnel to undertake the manufacturing feasibility for all the BIW sub assemblies as part of the OEM vehicle design and development team.

In parallel the same group of Stadco personnel planned and specified the production processes and equipment in such a way that it was possible to undertake a rolling changeover from model to model by simply exchanging model specific tooling and reusing the robot cell facilities.

This approach to model changeover has now been successfully applied to three successive model programmes and Stadco continues to provide manufacturing feasibility support as part of the OEM vehicle design and development team.