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DaimlerChrysler launches new Sprinter van in Ladson
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
DaimlerChrysler launched the next generation of its popular Sprinter van on March 27 with comments by S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, Charleston County Council Chairman Tim Scott and DaimlerChrysler Executive Vice President Wilfried Porth and tours of the former American LaFrance facility that the company has retrofitted over the past seven months to handle assembly-line production.
DaimlerChrysler took ownership of the facility in January 2006 after American LaFrance was purchased by Patriarch Partners. Since November of last year, both the custom emergency vehicle manufacturer and the German automaker have been using portions of the facility.
This dual use is scheduled to continue until July, by which time American LaFrance will be completely moved into its new headquarters and production facility off Interstate 26 in Berkeley County.
“A number of factors made Charleston the ideal choice as the location for this facility,” said Andreas Maas, president and CEO of DaimlerChrysler Manufacturing International LLC. “First of all, obviously, there was an existing facility, but beyond that Charleston has an outstanding port and is tremendous from a logistics perspective.
“It also has an outstanding work force, and then there’s the political environment, which is business-friendly,” Maas said. “It was clear from the moment we started talking about this that they wanted to see jobs here.”
The next generation of Sprinter vans is truly a global effort. Maas said the vans will be built in Germany, then partially disassembled and loaded into containers for shipment through the Port of Charleston. Then they’ll be reassembled at the Ladson plant and shipped to dealerships and customers throughout the United States.
Maas said the plant will produce roughly 22,000 Sprinter vans a year, and his goal is to shoot for completion of about 70 a day.
So far the biggest challenge at the Ladson facility has involved hardware during the process of taking over an existing facility and adjusting it to DaimlerChrysler’s needs.
“Emergency vehicles are unique, and they required the plant to be configured in such a way as to allow for custom work; as a result, we had to take a big empty space and configure it to better suit a massive assembly process,” Maas said.
“The other transition, of course, involved hiring people. For a long time we were hiring about one person a day, averaging one hire for every 10 interviews. By November, when production began to get underway, we had hired just over 180 workers for the facility.”
Maas credited the Center for Accelerated Technology Training at Trident Technical College for getting DaimlerChrysler’s newest workers ready for the assembly line to roll.
“At Trident our trainees are learning everything from blueprint reading to the metric system to how to assemble an engine,” he said.
A number of the company’s initial hires were also sent to Germany for four weeks of advanced training.
In the automobile industry, new models are rolled out approximately every eight years. However, it’s been about 10 years since the Sprinter was last updated, Maas said.
The American models will be sold under both the Freightliner and Dodge/Chrysler names. The European models will be sold under the Mercedes Benz imprint.
The management team in Ladson will consist of nine people, six Germans and three Americans. Maas believes the mix will allow him to draw upon the best of European and U.S. styles of management.
Asked to elaborate, he said Germans are very good at planning.
“We’re about detail and precision, and sometimes, perhaps, we over-engineer a situation,” Maas said. “In the United States, things are a bit different. Americans react to situations quickly, are more flexible and very fast. There’s an attitude of, ‘We will find a solution. We can make it. There’s always a way.’”
Maas himself grew up in Hamburg, Germany, and he said his career in the automotive world was born of a desire to work with a big, international company with an interesting product.
“Automobiles are an interesting product. We use them every day,” he explained. “Plus, DaimlerChrysler is a global player.”
Maas has been with the company for 11 years, working his way up the business side of the auto industry from a start in DaimlerChrysler’s finance department.
He later served as an executive assistant to the head of an 18,000-employee division, and then went on to head the company’s Westfalia subsidiary, serving as president of a company that made camper vans.
DaimlerChrysler is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and has four main divisions: Mercedes, Chrysler, commercial and financial services. It is also a significant investor in Airbus.
The 121-year-old company currently has approximately 400,000 employees around the world.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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