Shreveport Grand Opening
Date: October 2003

An exciting opportunity for AGS has been the successful opening of the new assembly and sequencing facility in Shreveport, Louisiana. AGS has been working since October 2002 to ready a facility in Shreveport to perform the assembly and sequencing of parts for the new General Motors Colorado / Canyon lineup of pickup trucks. The facility chosen is an 80,000 square foot facility located two miles from the General Motors assembly plant to supply sequenced products to the GM plant, as they are required.

The plant is planned to operate on two shifts, employing up to 80 hourly employees and eight salaried staff and will perform assembly and sequencing of the Hummer3, and Colorado/Canyon bumpers and components produced in the Cambridge and Windsor facilities. After assembly, the bumpers will be sequenced into GM racks in the correct color sequence to match the body colors being produced on the GM assembly line. The parts are then shipped two racks at a time to the GM plant and moved immediately “line side” to be installed on the vehicles. It’s planned at this time to have approximately 30 minutes of product at the GM plant. JIT at its best!!

Product and Sequencing quality are crucial in an operation like this, so systems have been developed to support this process. If a quality problem is experienced, or the wrong color is sequenced into the racks, AGS is expected to provide replacement parts before the vehicle moves a specific number of stations on the assembly line. This gives us an anticipated 12 minutes to respond with correct parts, which must be delivered by hand to the assembly line for installation. A giant task! Our ability to build appropriate product banks is critical.

In addition to the bumper products, AGS is also assembling and sequencing the truck headliners for Grupo Antolin, North America, and Tenneco Exhaust systems. The challenges for the plant are the same as for the bumpers with one twist. Some of the components provided by Grupo are delivered from Spain and Mexico. Reaction times and control of quality on these products takes on even more emphasis because of the delivery times of replacement components from these suppliers. At full production, a truck will be leaving for the GM plant with sequenced product every 13 minutes. That’s an aggressive challenge which AGS’ Shreveport team is geared up to meet.