The productivity of the plant is a concept with several sides to it, from labor productivity to payroll costs. All of them are taken into account when the group wants to improve productivity, said Jerome Olive general manager of Automobile Dacia.
“We are doing everything we can to improve this productivity and keep the plant in Tangiers in the rearview mirror.”
One of the key elements is local integration and the plant in Mioveni is doing much better than its rival in Tangiers in this respect, because it has very many local suppliers and wants to have as many possible close to it to cut costs, Jerome Olive added.
While production integration stands at 70% in Mioveni, the rate is about 40% in Tangiers, considering the carmaker has about 800 suppliers in Romania.
The plant in Tangiers, as Carlos Ghosn himself said, opened because of need for additional capacity, Olive said.
Tangiers has two assembly lines that turn out 30 vehicles an hour and its second line started operating a little while ago. The plant in Mioveni has only one line, which can turn out 64 cars an hour. Tangiers assembles Lodgy and Dokker on the first line and Sandero and Sandero Stepway on the second.
The competitiveness of the plant in Mioveni must not be called into question. A carmaker cannot invest and then erase the results. The projects made economic sense. The cars will be allocated to the most competitive plant, economically speaking. Mioveni is currently working in three shifts and Tangiers in two.
Mioveni will hit a record high of 343,000 cars assembled this year, up over 10% on last year, because of the launch of the new Logan, Logan MCV and Sandero and of the facelifted Duster.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)