ZF in Solihull: Ten Years of Passenger Car Axle Assembly

By Made in the Midlands News
schedule30th Sep 14

On September 30, 2014, the passenger car axle assembly at ZF's Solihull location in Great Britain will celebrate its ten-year anniversary: At the plant near Birmingham, ZF Friedrichshafen AG has been producing axle corner modules just-in-time and just-in-sequence since 2004. Back in 2010, the location was already presented with the renowned "Manufacturing Excellence Award" for its efficient and flexible logistics system.

"The assembly of corner modules and complete front and rear axles for passenger car manufacturers has been one of the important international fields of action for the ZF Group," said Dr. Peter Holdmann, Head of ZF's Chassis Systems business unit in the Car Chassis Technology division, on the occasion of the 10th production anniversary in Solihull.

Since 2004, the ZF location has been delivering products just-in-time and just-in-sequence to the automotive manufacturer's plants that are only a few kilometres away. Only four hours pass, at most, between the customer's quantity-based call-off and the delivery of the finished product. For its efficient, production-synchronous logistics system, the ZF location was awarded the renowned British "Manufacturing Excellence Award" back in 2010. The ZF plant in Solihull has a rigorous no fault forward approach to quality management resulting in 44 months of zero defects at its customers, an outstanding performance in the just-in-sequence environment.

To ensure also future flexibility of the supply chain at the ZF plant in Solihull a second assembly line was inaugurated in August 2014. Currently, 113 employees in Solihull produce more than 150,000 corner modules on 4,132 square metres.



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