Full re-engineering of the production process.

Redesign of the line with a view to maximum user-friendliness.

A new organisation of activities on the line.

The introduction of digital Elementary Technological Units (ETUs) as a result of widespread computerisation of the entire production process.
These four strategies for change were crucial in improving manufacturing process capacity. And they meant greater manufacturing precision and product quality.

Re-engineering of the production process.

Production re-engineering optimised work on the line in terms of quality and efficiency. It mainly affected the panel and assembly shops, although the redesign operation extended to the whole factory: each individual process stage was made more efficient. Quality control is also a priority: the Fiat Stilo undergoes more than 200 checks throughout the entire process, most of these electronic.

1) Panel shop

The panel shop is crucial to the quality of any car. It is the stage at which advanced automation is most crucial in ensuring product quality. The widespread technological contribution is borne out by the figures: 316 robots for spot welding, 8 robots for seam welding, 916 welding grippers, 200 operations overall. This area saw the introduction of several new features with the advent of the Fiat Stilo.

Latest-generation welding robots

The welding robots were introduced in 2000. They are equipped with electric motors and electric welding grippers that assure a hotter, cleaner weld spot, i.e. a higher quality weld.

'Single tool' optoelectronic control stations

The Cassino panel shop contains two second-generation laser optoelectronic control stations for the chassis and body that feature a single tool system.

Dual control ensures perfect geometry of the car skeleton: chassis control, which precedes the body control is important for ensuring the quality of a part to which mechanical units will be fitted. Accuracy of form and dimension is essential to ensure outstanding qualities of car agility, handling and roadholding.

This is complemented by the new single tool system. This exclusive Fiat Auto process allows chassis and body geometry to be checked independently from the carrier on which they travel so that any carrier geometry errors do not affect the laser measurement. This solution represents a true factor of excellence in the Fiat Stilo's production system because it minimises the possibilities of reading errors in laser control.

Open gate

The open gate system has replaced the old robot gate system to ensure greater precision when fitting the side panels. This robotised line operating system also allows greater weld accuracy because the robot's mechanical arms have greater scope for movement inside the body.

Control of ultrasound welds

At Cassino, weld spot seals are checked using an ultrasound sensor system. The sensor tests the spot and passes or fails weld quality according to response spectrum amplitude.

2) Assembly

The new production process features introduced at Cassino for the Fiat Stilo are also important for the assembly stage.

Automatic body system with multiple tightening tables

The automatic body system with multiple tightening tables allows mechanical units to be fastened to the body at a single assembly station. This makes it possible to minimise tightening of mechanical components to the car body, which is often the cause of annoying noise inside the car.

Robotised window preparation and bonding

At Cassino, installation of the windows to the car body is fully automated and performed by a robotised system. The system typically assures improved fastening and accuracy due to a fixed delivery bonding system.

Ensuring an ergonomic workplace

Ergonomic working practices on the line reduce fatigue. Operators therefore enjoy a better quality of life and perform each operation more accurately. This is why much attention was devoted to ergonomics when developing the new modular integrated factory model at Cassino.

The entire line was computer-designed to assess the ergonomics of activities performed by each worker. The 340 stations on the Stilo line were examined to identify the ones affected by most assembly problems. The stations were then drawn to create mathematically-modelled simulations of the workers' stations. This allowed some production stages to be reviewed to enable each tradesman to work to his or her best ability. The optimum height levels of all the other individual work stations were examined to prevent operators having to spend long periods with their arms raised because this is particularly tiring.

Six months after production began on the Fiat Stilo, practically the entire process was reviewed from an ergonomic viewpoint and any workstation functions that could not be examined on the drawing board were corrected if necessary.

The outcome is that the index used by the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the major US occupational safety organisation) to quantify fatigue due to the execution of working movements is less than 0.5 for 97% of workstations. This result is an absolute guarantee of working quality because the alert level is more than 1.

New work organisation

The Cassino plant took a very important step forward in its production organisation model at the launch of the Fiat Stilo. This progress, first introduced two years ago, is now being extended to other Fiat Auto plants.

The new organisation model is based on the role of the Team Leader. Each ETU, Elementary Technological Unit, is composed of four working Teams, each in turn made up of 11 operators and managed by a Team Leader. The Team Leader is responsible for training the operators in his Team; checking that operators with the correct training are working in the various work stations; giving support to operators encountering difficulties in the most critical stations - and collecting suggestions from team operators during shared breaks.

More than anything else, however, the Team Leader must guarantee the quality of his production stage. The basic idea behind introducing the Team Leader was to give operators maximum responsibility for guaranteeing quality.

Digital ETU: information is the key to efficiency

Digitalisation of elementary technological Units on the production lines allowed more efficient control of problems. Under this system, any new features added to the process are entered into an enormous digital database. As a result of this data collection and organisation operation, each ETU is able to access all information through an ETU Portal, an interface of the Intranet that connects all the operating units.

Plant tradesmen can find all the information and indicators they need on the Portal: product data and statistics, work station maps, 3-D ergonomic simulations, operation cards, procedure descriptions, tools, materials, saturation levels, quality indicators, supplier management tables, links to corporate systems and sites.

The inclusion of an ANDON warning light system for quality control also provides all the ETUs with advance warning of any problems in one unit.

Suppliers play a leading role in the modular integrated factory

Suppliers make a crucial contribution to the quality of the Fiat Stilo. Under the new modular integrated factory model, they add more to the production process since they themselves, as leaders in their own sectors, supervise the assembly of supplied products and ensure the quality of the final result.