MRO Today - Chrysler: Power plant

Power plant
DC-powered tools are helping
Chrysler meet its quality initiatives
and regain its status as an
automotive giant

by Paul V. Arnold

At the start of the decade, the Chrysler Corp. was spinning
its wheels.

In 1991, the automotive “giant” lost $800 million, saw its market share fall to less than 8 percent for passenger cars and had its stock plummet to $10 a share.

Why wasn’t America buying Chrysler? Quality.

In 1991, Chrysler brands (Dodge, Chrysler and Plymouth) finished well below the industry average in the J.D. Power & Associates survey of initial quality.

In the 1992 J.D. Power survey, the Dodge Shadow and Plymouth Sundance models were rated next to last among small cars in reliability. Shadow and Sundance had 162 and 137 defects, respectively, per 100 cars, according to the study. The small-car average was 111.

Economic analyst Susan Jacobs told Fortune at the time: “Chrysler needs a track record for quality and reliability it doesn’t have.”

In the midst of that turmoil, in April 1991, Chrysler made two decisions which helped reverse their fortunes: it approved development of a new small car, the Neon; and decided to revamp the Neon’s future assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill.

Chrysler’s push toward quality had begun, and Belvidere was leading the way through a conversion to DC-powered assembly tools.

A call for help
From 1980 to ’92, when Belvidere produced cars such as the Dodge Dynasty, Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, plant engineers struggled with something Japanese business consultant Masaaki Imai calls “the gap between quality and quality control.”

According to Imai in his book "Gemba Kaizen" (roughly translated: value and quality), quality is maintained from the beginning of the process, unlike quality control which checks at the end. This catches potential errors, malfunctions and other problems before they happen.

“As we would check our fasteners, we knew there had to be a better way,” says Bill Sullivan, a tool and process engineer at the Belvidere plant. “We were almost exclusively using air tools on the assembly line. They were control tools, which did give us feedback, but we needed to guarantee quality. We needed to guarantee torque. We asked the tool companies for help.”

Tool makers such as Atlas Copco, Stanley, Gardner-Denver, ITD Automation, Rotor and Techmotive were high on direct-current power tools and explained the advancements taking place in this field.

“That got us excited,” says tool and process engineer John Jensen.

Sullivan and Jensen gave the nutrunners and controllers a test drive at Belvidere’s newly upgraded assembly tool crib and testing center. The products were also tested at the Chrysler Technology Center in Detroit.

“We were convinced,” says Jensen. “We were in a changeover (production wouldn’t begin until November 1993), so it was the perfect time to go in a new direction.”

In 1992 and early ’93, the plant began replacing the pneumatic tools with DC control tools.

Today, there are around 500 DCs at the plant and they are used for every critical and safety-related assembly job. DCs account for 60 percent of the plant’s total number of assembly tools.

The percentage is rising (75 percent is the goal), as are the quality ratings (the defects per 100 rating for the award-winning Neon is a very competitive 100), prompting other Chrysler plants to follow Belvidere’s lead.

The tide has turned
Tom Novak, a salesman for Stanley Air Tools (a division of Stanley Works), has done business with the Belvidere plant for three years. Prior to that, he sold tools to a Ford automotive plant. Over the past decade, he has witnessed the growth of DC.

“Chrysler isn’t alone in converting to DC,” he says. “Five years ago, DC tool sales probably were 10 percent of Stanley Air Tool’s industrial business. It’s now 40 percent and I see that increasing to 75 percent in the next five years.”

The other top suppliers to Belvidere — Stanley, Atlas Copco, ITD Automation and Gardner-Denver — also are seeing buyer preference turn toward the DCs.

Atlas Copco says more than 50 percent of its industrial business is currently in DC electrics. Cooper Power Tools, the parent company of ITD Automation and Gardner-Denver, says its DC sales have also risen sharply in recent years.

All say performance and price are the reasons for the switch.

Why DC?
In the late 1980s, DC tools were bulky, slow and expensive. A typical control tool cost $20,000. But the DCs have gone the path of the personal computer. Technology and innovation make the models of 10 years ago seem like dinosaurs. The price has dropped dramatically.

“Assembly tools have made the progression, the evolution, to more accuracy, better control and better repeatability,” says Novak. “The basic air tool cannot hold a candle to today’s DC. The pneumatic control tool, where you have a transducer and torque monitoring equipment passing information to the tool, is worlds better than the basic air tool, but it isn’t in the same league as the DC.”

Novak says that according to Stanley data, a basic air tool can have a 12 to 15 percent error rate when driving a nut, bolt or screw. The error range for pneumatic control tools is between 5 and 6 percent. For DC control tools? One percent. (Gemba kaizen!)

“With that kind of accuracy, you know the job is being done correctly,” says Sullivan. “You know you are putting out a good car.”

Here’s the reason for the pinpoint accuracy. While a pneumatic control tool can be programmed to perform a function and receives commands and information from a microprocessor-equipped control box, it is still a one-speed tool.

Turn it on and brrrrrr, the screw, bolt or nut drives home. You can’t change speeds or the rate of torque during a driving cycle. A job can’t be fine-tuned in one step.

For an assembly where a screw links a plastic part to a metal base, that may mean driving the screw too tight and cracking the plastic. Or, if it is left loose, the screw could eventually fall out.

With a DC control tool, a driving cycle can be formatted to be as complex as the job needs to be.

Think of it in the same terms as a videotape editing machine, where you can run a piece of film, slow it down, pause it, reverse it and run it again. With a DC assembly tool, those features and commands are delivered to the tool through a program held in the controller box. It is automatic and efficient.

Each tool on the assembly line is specially programmed for a particular fastening job.

So, for a plastic-to-metal assembly, the DC unit can be programmed to drive the screw swiftly, but before it completes the cycle, the tool can pause for a fraction of a second and then softly finish the tightening process.

Accuracy is just one benefit; tracking is another.

“It will alert you when there’s a problem,” says Novak. “Loose hardware is a vehicle manufacturer’s biggest headache; someone forgets to tighten something or put in a fastener. At each station, it will count the number of fasteners that are correctly torqued and alert the operator when one is off or missing. If nobody corrects it, it will shut the line down or page a supervisor that there is a problem.”

Phillip Bua, the North American electric tools manager for Atlas Copco, points to energy efficiency.

“If you take a typical compressor in an assembly plant, it’s usually a 150-horsepower motor running a pump that is producing compressed air. That thing is 10 to 15 percent efficient, so it consumes a lot of energy to make air for the plant,” he says. “Our study three years ago showed electric tools are 400 percent more efficient from an energy standpoint than the standard air system.”

Bua says DCs also provide more horsepower per tool, greater shaft speeds, are lighter than pneumatics and need just one power cable. A pneumatic control tool needs two, one for air and one for electricity.

The bottom line
If all this is true, why hasn’t every assembly plant gone DC? Even though prices have dropped, it is still a major financial investment.

A basic air tool costs around $2,000. One with a controller costs around $6,000. A typical DC with a mid-range controller costs around $11,000.

When you are talking 825 assembly tools, like the number at Belvidere, that’s $9.1 million.

But tool manufacturers and plants that have the tools point to bottom-line cost.

“If you are eliminating errors, you are reducing your chance of warranty claims and recalls,” says Sullivan. “That alone is saving you millions. That doesn’t include the amount you’re saving on producing compressed air. That’s expensive.”

Adds Atlas Copco’s Bua: “DCs are faster, plus you don’t have to redo an assembly (you get it right the first time). When you factor that in, our studies show you are saving up to 20 seconds per assembly operation. That might not seem like a lot, but when you add the amount of assemblies and the fact that you are making 60 to 80 cars an hour (Belvidere is producing 76), that’s a huge savings.”

Passing the test
The status of the Belvidere plant grows along with its increasing use of DC tools.

It’s not uncommon to see representatives from other Chrysler plants and non-automotive assembly plants touring the facility and getting the lowdown on how it’s using the new technology. It’s also not uncommon for the guest list to include representatives from the major tool companies.

“We have always had an open-door policy with the tool manufacturers,” says Jensen. “But we get a lot more reps and salesmen in here now. They want us to be the first company to take a look at their new lines or prototypes of future products.”

To even get into the plant, manufacturers must go through tool guru Walt Boryczka at the Chrysler Technology Center. He’ll examine each tool and give a Chrysler code number to those that receive passing grades. But that certification is merely the first step toward a sale.

It gets tougher at Belvidere.

First, Sullivan and Jensen get their hands on the tool.

“In the testing shop, we’ll run 10 to 20 hard pull-ups (a fastener pulls up to and makes full contact with object), then 10 to 20 medium pulls with washers and then a dozen or so soft pull-ups against cloth,” says Jensen.

Readings are taken, ergonomics are considered and weights and speeds are recorded. Then, it goes out on the line.

“That’s where we see how it really holds up,” says Jensen. “We’ve put tools out there that get hot after an hour of running or they don’t work. We don’t baby them.”

Comments from workers hold just as much weight.

Just as much weight is given to comments made by the workers using the tool.

“If they don’t like it, we generally don’t buy it,” says Sullivan. “The tool companies are very receptive to their comments. If an operator says it works great, but the handle isn’t comfortable, the company will take it home, make the changes and bring it back for more testing.

“We’ve had companies change designs, make the tools narrower, make them lighter. They listen.”

Sullivan says he and Jensen purchase 75 percent of the tools that pass the CTC and Belvidere tests.

These tools then replace one of the pneumatic control tools on the line. At the present rate, less than 35 of the remaining 325 air tools are control tools. Basic air tools are used in non-critical assemblies.

Less strain, less pain
When a DC replaces a pneumatic on the line, few tears are shed.

“If I had a choice, I would never go back to the pneumatics,” says Don Dixon, a Belvidere assembly line worker since 1994. “I worked for a year and a half with those and the past 2 1/2 years with electrics. The electrics are easier to work with and there’s not as much strain and pressure on your arms, shoulders and joints.”

Margaret Revolinski, an assembly worker since 1989, agrees.

“I don’t miss the air tools,” she says. “There’s no jerk to the DCs from torque. With air, when they used to torque them, they sometimes would swing up and hit people in the face. The DCs are safer, faster, lighter, more accurate. They’re just better.”

Something to torque about
The work being done and the tools being used at the Belvidere plant are one example of the quality initiatives that have helped Chrysler get out of the mud.

Neon was named the 1994 car of the year by Automobile Magazine and among the best products of 1994 by Time. In 1995, Chrysler was rated best among all car companies in quality improvement by J.D. Power and Neon earned top honors in its class in the Strategic Vision Inc. Quality Index. In ’96, Forbes named Chrysler its company of the year.

Chrysler had pretax profits of $4.7 billion in 1997 and its stock is around $55, more than five times its 1991 price. In July, a merger agreement was signed between it and Germany’s Daimler-Benz.

This article appeared in the October/November 1998 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 1998.