Analysis: why Vauxhall's Luton plant has a bright future

To accommodate the new line, Vauxhall cleared out a cavernous 8000-square-feet underground car park and installed 300 new robots plus assembly jigs and mechanical handling gear capable of pushing out 24 chassis platform underbodies every hour. “With a lot of blood, sweat and tears, we’ve transformed this space and installed and commissioned a whole new chassis line in just 12 months,” said Wright. 

This might just be a record for a new assembly plant body shop, the urgency of PSA to speed up the turnaround providing the impetus. 

Such speed of delivery is possible since the line at Vauxhall replicates the one installed at Sevel Nord, PSA’s van plant at Valenciennes in northern France. 

Luton is now part of PSA’s ‘van cluster’, led by Sevel Nord, and featuring Luton, Sevel Sud in Italy and Gliwice in Poland. Quality is benchmarked against Nord and, on our visit, Citroën and Peugeot vans are in production as a quality yardstick. 

Operations at Luton have been simplified by bringing in kits of pressed body panels from Sevel Nord’s suppliers, although this has diluted local content to 22% – below the 40% that it was under GM. Vauxhall hopes to raise the local content in future. 

With panels coming in from France, Luton’s ageing press shop is quiet for now. The speed of the model changeover at Luton allows insufficient time to build new body dies, which typically takes two years. 

Previously, the press shop was fully occupied stamping out panels both for Luton and Renault’s Normandy van plant. Replacement work might include panels for the PSA family of vans. 

As well as the new platform bodyshop, the Luton plant has reorganised its flow of parts and assembly to use two floors instead of three, dedicating the ground floor solely for assembly and final trim. 

A conveyor moves platforms from the new underground welding line to the first floor where the bodies are built up, before dropping down to the ground floor. 

Machines are crammed in to these new areas as PSA cracks the whip to improve workflow and shrink the production line footprint, one of its production efficiency measures. 

Body assembly starts when body panels arrive in trucks from France, crated in sets of 18 and paired left/right to ensure full sets. 

After being loosely ‘tabbed’ together they move into assembly, where 128 new robots are deployed on bodyside welding alone. 

Sparks fly, as usual, in the body-framing welding station, which is also new, and is the centrepiece of the plant. 

Usefully, more automation has raised output, and by mid-2020 Vauxhall plans 90,000 to 100,000 units per year, considerably more than the 60,000 annually under GM. At 100,000, the paint shop will be at full capacity.