Sindelfingen is where it all began for Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in 1915, and it’s where the future starts for DaimlerChrysler AG.
Sindelfingen is a city in southwestern Germany and the name of Daimler-Benz’s largest and most important factory–the final assembly point for Mercedes C-Class, E-Class and S-Class cars. It is the testing ground for all new technology that goes into vehicles that wear the prestigious Mercedes star emblem.
Producing an average 400,000 cars a year, Sindelfingen workers put together about 56 percent of the 715,000 Mercedes-Benz cars and sport-utility vehicles sold worldwide last year.
Locals refer to Sindelfingen as Startown because the three-pointed emblem of Daimler-Benz pops up just about everywhere: on cars, trucks, buildings and the bright blue overalls of 32,000 workers. People who live in Sindelfingen, a forested factory town about 15 miles southwest of Daimler-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart, are called Daimlertowners because most work directly or indirectly for the automaker.
Though Sindelfingen is the brightest jewel in the Daimler-Benz manufacturing crown, a werkbesichtigung, or plant tour, shows why Daimler-Benz is eager to merge with Chrysler Corp.: Europe’s wealthiest automaker has a lot to learn from America’s smallest, at least when it comes to manufacturing efficiency.
That’s not to say the Daimler-Benz plant hasn’t changed. It has come a long way in five years.
Sindelfingen used to be notorious for its overflowing repair shop, where workers put cars that rolled off the assembly line with defects. Once the cars made it to the repair shop, mechanics and engineers would painstakingly perfect the cars. Such labor intensity–the norm until the early 1990s–gave Mercedes its reputation for quality.
It also gave Mercedes bloated costs and ultimately its shocking sticker prices. “In the past, they have gotten quality through high cost,” said Ron Harbour, president of Harbour & Associates, a productivity research firm based in Troy, near Detroit. “They have a lot of people, a lot of inspections, a lot of rework.”
Daimler-Benz wised up about five years ago. It overhauled its manufacturing process, adapting quality inspection tips from Japanese and American competitors. About two years ago, without sacrificing quality, Daimler-Benz got rid of all final inspection repair people, turning them into inspectors at various stages in assembly. Now the repair shop is usually empty. Most cars that roll off the lines are ready to sell.
But Daimler-Benz can learn more from competitors–especially from Chrysler, the world’s most efficient automaker in per-vehicle profit.
Chrysler brings Mercedes an established system aimed at improving efficiency. Chrysler works with suppliers to reduce costs, and it engineers products to fit together more easily on the assembly line–two ideas not firmly in place with European manufacturers. For example, workers at Sindelfingen build dashboards almost from scratch. In one work station, workers put together hundreds of parts, then a group of different workers hauls the completed dashboard to the assembly line, where a robot assists another group of workers with installation.
Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit will build its 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee with fewer people, fewer parts and fewer dollars by using “sequenced sourcing.” Chrysler, which will start building ’99 Jeeps this summer, will pay a supplier to do all dashboard subassembly work at a supplier-owned factory near the plant. The supplier will ship completed dashboards to the plant and unload them near the proper spot on the assembly line. Installing the completed dashboards will take seconds and little labor from Chrysler’s highly paid assemblers.
Daimler-Benz uses a similar process to build its M-Class in Alabama, but it can’t do the same in Sindelfingen, where union rules are too rigid to allow major changes, and the work force is relatively set in its ways.
Donovan Penrose, a professor of German at Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management in Phoenix, said cost-target production means Chrysler sets a price target for a new vehicle before starting to develop it and then works to keep costs within a budget dictated by the envisioned retail price of the vehicle. In the past, Daimler would develop a car and then put a price on it after completing the project. But the German company is trying to adopt the cost-target approach, Penrose said.
Another lesson for Sindelfingen: Space is money.
Chrysler learned from Japanese manufacturers 10 years ago that stockpiling parts and containers is wasteful. Instead of filling factory floors with parts, Chrysler could use the space for value-added jobs–expanding an assembly line or broadening a workstation to make it ergonomically friendly. Doing away with clutter also made for a safer environment with fewer jagged edges and spilled parts.
At most Chrysler plants, workers on bicycles and little trucks scurry around delivering parts when needed. Independent suppliers continually drive into factory grounds delivering parts. Workstations have a minimum of inventory, and few components are left over at the end of a shift.
This process, perfected by Toyota, is called just-in-time delivery. Its biggest advantage is that if workers find a defect they can correct the problem before the defect is repeated in thousands of pieces. It saves millions of dollars and immeasurable time.
Daimler-Benz still has a way to go. But it’s learning, and employees say Chrysler will be a good teacher.
“The workers are taking responsibility for their part of the car,” said Sindelfingen spokeswoman Marianne Ihring. “They’re proud, and they build better cars than before.”
A LOOK AT THE PLANT
Sindelfingen is Daimler-Benz’s biggest factory, producing engines as well as Mercedes C-Class, E-Class and S-Class sedans, coupes and convertibles. Here’s a look at the plant:
– Origins: Sindelfingen opened as an aircraft factory in 1915. Car production began in 1919.
– Number of cars produced: 400,000 annually
– Electricity consumed: 1.4 million kilowatt hours per day (enough to provide energy for a city of 70,000)
– Number of workers: 32,000
– Women workers: 9 percent
– Born outside Germany: 20 percent
– Meals served: 7,200 in two shifts per day
– Average number of parts in a Sindelfingen Mercedes: 12,000
– Steel used: 1,200 tons daily
– Work performed by robots: roughly 50 percent
– Number of robots: in 1971, 17; in 1998, 1,000-plus
– Weekday visitors: 500 on average
