The process has started: car production has been launched in Kaluga
Tenet cars began to be produced at the former Volkswagen plant in August, and in October the young Russian brand immediately became one of the top five market leaders. The Izvestia correspondent visited the relaunched production facility in Kaluga and found out how and from what Tenet cars are made.
Saved the frames
These days, eighteen years ago, Volkswagen car production was being prepared here, and now AGR Automotive Group is reporting on the production of the first 30,000 Tenet cars, which were assembled in a full cycle with welding and painting.
The signs on the new plates are duplicated in Chinese, but in some places the Volkswagen inscriptions have also been preserved. Moreover, some workers are sporting the old "Vagov" overalls. It is a special pride of the new owner of the company, AGR Automotive Group, that they managed to retain a significant part of the former experienced team. Thus, according to Andrey Karagin, CEO of AGR Holding, 50% of the employees have worked here for more than 10 years. This means that they remember and know how to produce cars according to European standards. Those who left in previous years are also returning, Andrei Karagin noted. New employees are accepted through the training center.
Friendship of robots
Meanwhile, the task before AGR was not trivial: to produce completely different cars on the production line inherited from the factory, and at once with welding and painting and a high level of automation. We managed surprisingly quickly. The agreement with the Chinese supplier of Defetoo machine kits was signed in February, and the supply, installation and commissioning of the equipment began in the spring. The first test body was welded in June, and full-fledged production, as mentioned above, started in August.
Welding, painting and assembly lines have been upgraded to new models. Welding automation has grown to 90%, the old Fanuk robots have been befriended by the new Yaskawa, and now they work hand in hand. The maximum capacity of the lines is 41 vehicles per hour. The plant can produce almost 200,000 vehicles per year in three shifts, but now the volume is more modest and there are still two shifts.
They do it in batches
The second tier of Tenet T4 crossover bodies is moving along the conveyor, the other two models are not visible. They also mostly cover the sites around the plant. Most of the cars outside are in white. Now this color accounts for half of the orders, probably crossovers will go to taxi companies.
Alexander Malakhov, the head of the body shop, explains that it will not be possible to weld the bodies of several models on an assembly line at the same time. Now the fours are moving along the line, and in a few days the T7 will go. Another line has been allocated for the large T8 crossover, in a neighboring workshop, but equipment is currently being reconfigured there, and production of this model will return in December.
Galvanizing and feathers
From the outside, almost all car body panels are galvanized, with the exception of the roof. The anti-corrosion coating has been reinforced especially for Russia, the layers of soil and paint are thicker than those of the Chinese counterpart, according to representatives of the plant. In addition, the body in the cataphoresis tub does a 360-degree somersault so that the liquid penetrates even into hidden cavities. Before applying the base, the body is cleaned of the smallest particles with emu ostrich feathers — an exotic technology, but quite common in the automotive industry. The fully automatic line can now paint bodies in seven colors.
Even in the welding shop, along with 332 robots, almost 700 people work, but there are already more of them than robots in the paint shop — almost 400 against 57. At the assembly, a person is already almost completely replacing the machine — almost 1,400 employees and four robots. People are armed with electronic wrenches that transmit tightening parameters to the electronic database, and if something goes wrong and the nut is unscrewed, it will be possible to lift the archive and find out when it was poorly tightened.
Quality control
Quality is checked a lot and carefully, at almost all stages — more than three hundred employees who measure, touch, inspect cars are engaged in this. There is an audit in the assembly, paint and varnish shops and at the final stage. Internal control is also carried out by production workers. One or two bodies per shift are sent to check the geometry. Even on the individual sidewalls, pulled out from the conveyor, there was a sticker "suitable part".
At the Chery plant in China, which was previously visited by a correspondent of Izvestia, the processes are built somewhat differently. There, each robot-welded body is manually straightened by workers using grinders, and photos of defective workers are posted on an electronic "shame board."
According to representatives of the Russian plant, the Chinese are also interested in high quality — they brought an outlandish car to Kaluga to check the tightness of the body, which pumps air into the car.
The "boxed" solution
I was surprised that the parts on the Kaluga conveyor do not come in neat boxes and racks, but for the most part in ordinary cardboard boxes with the inscription Made in China. However, some of the blocks on the machines have already been localized in Russia. These are batteries, and tires are also planned, said a representative of the plant. There will also be stamping from Russian steel.
The plant's representatives did not disclose production volumes or specific plans. It is known that the factory can make three or four different models. Moreover, the body of a car similar to the Chery Tiggo 9 was found covered with a cover on one of the test stands.
The quality system at the plant remained almost Volkswagen-like, it was initially clear that it was cooler, Maxim Kadakov, editor-in-chief of Za Rudem, shared his impressions with Izvestia.
— Another thing is that it is possible to improve assembly production, but the car itself will not become a Volkswagen. As for the cardboard boxes along the conveyor, it seems that they have not yet had time to debug any operations with the return container or a more logical arrangement of these sets. I don't see anything wrong with the fact that they make 500 cars a day in two shifts. On the contrary, it seemed to me that the factory had been kept neat and clean since the old days," the expert noted.
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