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<b>Once and again: Perkins opens second new plant in less than a year; Griffin first sub-100 hp industrial diesel plant in U.S</b><br>
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<b>Diesel Progress North American Edition</b>, June, 2004 by Mike Osenga<br>
with the formal dedication of its Griffin, Ga., facility oil May 12, Perkins <br>
Hans Haefeli, newly named president of Perkins, said an Asian operation in China or India might also be a possibility.<br>
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"The key is, we are not moving production out of Peterborough, we are adding capacity due to the increase in demand for these engin," Haefeli said. The opening of Griffin and Curitiba last year, gives us global manufacturing flexibility and positions us near where our customers manufacture their products.<br>
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"These facilities reduce logistics and lead times, both increasingly important in today's engine business," Haefeli added. "We will continue to look at other opportunities to do this in other locations."<br>
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Choosing a location in the Southeast, about an hour south of Atlanta, was no accident either. "We chose the location near Atlanta because of the excellent logistics it provides for our North America customers;' said Jeremy Canham, general manager; Industrial Power Systems.<br>
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"It will be an engine made in America, the first tinge ever that Perkins has manufactured engines of this size here. Being located in the eastern U.S., the Griffin facility will be in close proximity to a high percentage of our North America customers," Canham added.<br>
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The 55,000 sq.ft, facility will assemble the Perkins 400 series of two-, three and four-cylinder, turbocharged and naturally aspirated, indirect-injection diesels, with outputs from 10 to 60 bhp. Griffin will also manufacture the Caterpillar model 3011C to 3024CT diesels, which are based on the same platform as the 400 series. The Perkins 400 series had heretofore been built only in Peterborough and by ISM in Japan.<br>
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The Griffin operation is expected to eventually produce as many as 60,000 engines annually, with a near-term target of 30,000. The plant currently employs 48 people, with employment expected to be 90 by the end of this year and possibly 150 by the end of 2005.<br>
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The new engine plant is located in what is rapidly becoming Caterpillar's "South Campus." Another Cat facility in the same complex builds electrical power generation and oil and gas packages, and there is also a Cat Logistics operation located nearby. Further, last year Cat moved production of its 3412 diesels from Mossville to the Griffin site, an operation housed in the module packaging plant.<br>
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Assembling engines in Griffin is part of a five-year strategy to increase production of the 400 series to over 100,000 engines annually, said Paul Clark, facility manager for Griffin. "When we looked at what it would take to build 100,000 engines, it continued on page 106 was obvious a significant manufacturing expansion, especially in North American, was going to be needed."<br>
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"We were at capacity in Peterborough," Haefeli said, "and for the volumes we aspired to with the 400 series we knew we were going to have to build in the U.S." Hacfeli added that he expected Perkins to be "well through" the 100,000 goal by the end of 2005.<br>
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The single largest customer for Griffin is Caterpillar's skid-steer loader manufacturing plant in SanFord, N.C., about 400 miles from Griffin.<br>
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However, Richard Case, managing director, industrial power systems, said that less than 40% of Griffin's production is destined for Cat machines, with the remainder going, under either the Cat or Perkins name, into a range of off-highway equipment built by other manufacturers. Specific external uses include turf maintenance, welders and pump sets, as well as construction uses such as light towers, generator sets and aerial lifts.<br>
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Griffin is designed as a "mirror image" of the Perkins-Shibaura facilities in Peterborough which began operation in 1996, the same year the joint venture was sidled. In fact, all the initial technicians on the Griffin line spent four weeks Ironing on the Perkins-Shibaura line in Peterborough.<br>
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Like that operation and Curitiba as well, this is primarily an engine assembly operation built around simples flexible processes in which all major components arrive at the plant fully machined. There are no machining operations at either Curitiba or Griffin or the Perkins-Shibaura operations in Peterborough.<br>
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The assembly line at Griffin has 17 stations fed by 11 sub-assembly stations, including a complete cylinder head assembly and test operation. The engines come to the line as bare blocks and the various sub-assemblies are added to the engine as it moves down the line.<br>
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