Sunday, May 10, 2009
Taking the wheel: Top man at Pulaski County Volvo facility aims to make plant world-class
Patrick Collignon is head of the Pulaski County Volvo trucks facility at a critical time.
Photos by Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times
Patrick Collignon, manager of the Volvo Trucks North America factory in Pulaski County, wants to make the New River Valley plant world-class.
A worker assembles a truck chassis at the Volvo plant in Dublin.
Desert camo Mack trucks for the U.S. military wait to be shipped from the Volvo plant.
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DUBLIN -- Shortly after he reached Southwest Virginia, the newly assigned manager of Volvo Trucks North America removed an unneeded ventilation fan that made a big racket over the assembly line and consumed much electricity.
Patrick Collignon earned stripes as an energy miser in Europe, when he and others converted Volvo Trucks Europa, Volvo's highest-producing truck plant, to run entirely on plant-based fuels and electricity generated by wind, sun and water.
Now in charge of one of the largest industrial employers in Southwest Virginia, Collignon is pursuing an agenda here, but one not quite as ambitious.
His goal is to bring half of the plant's energy in line with clean concepts. His overall goal, he said, is to make the New River Valley plant world-class. It must be to survive, said Collignon, who arrived in December.
The Pulaski County plant, which has been making heavy duty trucks for 35 years, is weathering a severe downturn in truck manufacturing and sales. Motor carriers are postponing purchases of heavy duty trucks from leading manufacturers, triggering massive reductions in sales and jobs.
Meanwhile, Volvo has begun repaying $1.29 million of $3.6 million in state incentives because of missed employment projections made 10 years ago.
The company fell short in a 1999 pledge to create 1,277 jobs and create a worker training center on its property. The center was to enable multiple employers in the region to train staffs.
Economic downturn cost hundreds of plant jobs
The plant produced a record 50,206 trucks during 2006 only to see output drop to 20,227 in 2008, spokesman Jim McNamara said. Employment, which officials say is directly tied to truck orders, has fallen from a peak of more than 3,000 to about 1,200 today.
This year the downturn, an industrywide trend, is expected to squeeze sales an additional 30 percent to 40 percent, according to McNamara.
In this climate, Collignon said, layoffs were a must. Keeping surplus employees places a business in jeopardy, he said.
In the latest Volvo layoff announcement, in January, with employment at about 1,600, executives announced up to 650 cuts this spring. The union said 431 were let go April 9. No further information was available about the remainder of the planned cuts.
In addition, the plant completed this year four weeklong shutdowns during which employees collect regular and special, union-negotiated, company-paid unemployment pay.
On the plus side for employees, the New River Valley plant continues to assemble Volvo's Mack-branded trucks.
The company said in August it intended to move that work to a factory in Macungie, Pa., during the last three months of 2008. It didn't happen but might still, officials said.
McNamara said executives must first wrap up negotiations with the production union in Macungie, which has been working without a new contract for several years. He declined to elaborate.
Collignon, 47, lives in Salem with his wife, Ann, and twin 16-year-old sons Maxim and Maxell. He was with General Motors from 1985 to 1995 and has been at Volvo ever since. He said he was attracted to Volvo by its willingness to reconsider how it does things.
"It's to continually question your manufacturing process," he said.
He said the slow period is ideal for that.
"The issue is, how are we preparing for the future?" Collignon said.
It's a question any company can rightly ask itself right now, he said.
"Does that company have a dynamic, a passion ... or is that company sitting in the corner?" he said.
"A lot of people now are immobilized," Collignon said. "They lack the courage and they lack the passion to improve the business."
Volvo is not sitting in the corner, was the message embodied in the new chief's words.
He has a track record in this form of Volvo-esque thinking.
Collignon built green reputation in Belgium
With Collignon its leader, the Volvo truck factory in Ghent, Belgium, lined up new wind and solar electrical generators and a purchase agreement with a hydroelectricity producer to shift entirely to renewably generated electricity in 2007.
For heat, the plant burns wood pellets and bio-oil. It generates no more carbon than the plant materials -- before their conversion to fuel -- had removed from the atmosphere, according to a case study by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva.
The council called Ghent the industry's first "carbon-neutral" factory.
When Collignon arrived in Virginia, the plant here had already made strides. It is testing wind currents with a single turbine whose energy contributes to the operation of a facility sign and lamps trained on display trucks parked outside. Solar energy powers several emergency exit lights.
Skylights admit natural light through most of the main assembly area. The company added seven large skylights that are 18 feet by 33 feet and 28 smaller ones that are 6 feet by 10 feet. Sensors that measure incoming sunshine adjust the plant's internal lighting accordingly. Water conservation and recycling projects abound.
Collignon went looking for more savings, evidently unsatisfied with the plant's energy profile. In 2008, the plant used 64.3 million kilowatts of electricity and 400 million cubic feet of natural gas, McNamara said.
Collignon found a ventilation hood over a staging area where newly built trucks are started up just before being driven out of the plant.
The plant conducted air quality tests to see if it could operate safely without it. As it turned out, innovations around engine emissions had rendered the hood unnecessary and it was taken out.
"It's part of rethinking the business," Collignon said.
Lester Hancock, president of the workers union at the plant, United Auto Workers Local 2069, confirmed the story.
He said the diesel-powered trucks at one time belched black smoke when started up. Today, "you can actually put a white T-shirt over the exhaust pipes and it will still come out white," Hancock said.
More reductions are coming.
The plant is gearing up to equip 2010 trucks with an exhaust after-treatment system called Selective Catalytic Reduction to meet mandatory clean-air standards. The system will add $9,600 to the price of vehicles, which are currently selling for about $130,000.
An injection of urea solution into the hot exhaust will convert nitrogen oxides into harmless components. The technology will complete a multipart program designed to reduce output of regulated emissions from diesel engines to near zero.
"In some cities, the exhaust will be cleaner than the air," McNamara said.
Volvo making trucks for U.S. Army, Schneider
For this and other reasons, the company's products are in demand.
Volvo is building 152 sand-colored trucks for the U.S. Army (specifically the TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, which is a Warren, Mich., unit engaged in weapon systems research and development).
It is building 125 for a new customer, Schneider National Inc., a Green Bay, Wis., company that calls itself the nation's largest motor carrier.
McNamara said a huge share of the goods consumed in America move by truck, which virtually guarantees a resurgence of orders at some point.
"Freight transportation is absolutely necessary for modern life," he said.
For the citizens and community members who rely on Volvo as a source of good-paying jobs, Collignon had no specific predictions on when that resurgence will happen, except to say when it does, it will be fast and intense.
Says union leader Hancock: "I think we're going to be prepared when the economy does pick up."
