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 Facility Feature: Seat Belt Systems' Mexican Operations
Special To The Monitor
Continuous improvement, a focus on lean manufacturing, and an unending commitment to safety at work and at home, is the motto for Seat
Belt Systems' Mexican Operations (SBS).
The company is composed of three facilities. Reynosa and Del Norte are located in Mexico, and the other one is in McAllen, Texas. SBS Mexican
Operations may straddle two countries, but the sites share identical goals and philosophies.
The Reynosa and Del Norte are production facilities, while the McAllen facility is the warehousing site.
The Reynosa plant, which boasts 165,000 square-feet, opened 20 years ago. More than 2,500 employees work three shifts six days each week producing
seat belt retractors. Reynosa has 75 assembly lines and an electrostatic paint line. Reynosa supplies approximately one million seat belt assemblies each
week to North American customers, including Ford, General Motors, Jaguar, Mercedes and Volkswagen.
The Del Norte facility, which produces seat belt buckles, opened a decade
ago. The site contains 147,000 square-feet, 61 assembly lines, and employs more than 1,800 people who work among three shifts.
Del Norte ships approximately 660,000 products per week to more than 50
locations. Customers include automobile manufacturers and seating companies. One of Del Norte's most impressive accomplishments is its ppm rate, which has dropped from 537 in 1990 to 18 in 1998.
As part of Del Norte, Mexican Operations opened a plastics molding operation in 1996 called TRW Del Plas. Approximately 160 people work four shifts on 30 machines.
Customers include TRW facilities in Mexico, Germany, Poland, South Africa, Brazil and Canada.
 In addition, TRW Del Serv operates from Del
Norte. Here, more than 100 employees complete service orders by producing items such as seat belts for vehicles no longer in production. Del Serv ships more than 30,000 products each week to
worldwide automobile manufacturers that supply parts. In McAllen, approximately 125 workers concentrate on distributing the goods produced in Reynosa and Del Norte.
The people of SBS Mexican Operations focus on five "back to basic" goals: quality, people, delivery, lean manufacturing and cost containment.
"We have been making progress with the lean manufacturing goal, and have
established areas of improvement in all of the others," said Dennis Haggerty, director of operations.
SBS Mexican Operations is dedicated to continuous improvement with a focus on lean manufacturing, Haggerty noted.
"Our goal is to play a leading role in the seat belt industry and at TRW as a lean producer," he said. Safety - both at work and at home - is perhaps the greatest focus of SBS Mexican Operations.
Employees practice the philosophy "Creando una Vida Seguro" (Creating a Safe Life). "Our focus on health, safety and quality issues help create a safer
life for the people who buy vehicles with our products, for those of us who make the products, and for employees who practice safety on the job," Haggerty said.
The workers at Mexican Operations concentrate on the safety and well-being of members of the community, as well. This involves community education programs such as Adopt-a-School, Start Smart, Safe Kids Foundation, Wolf
Trap, Space Camp, food drives, teaching seminars and others.
Mexican Operations is especially interested in helping the children of various communities. TRW has "adopted" several elementary schools, providing
health care services, etc. Employees have even helped build classrooms and restrooms at the schools.
In addition, at-work motivators - such as service awards, recognition
programs and employee sports team sponsorship - serve t o improve the quality of work life.
"This year alone, we will recognize more than 700 people for five or more
years of service," said Dave Brown, human resources manager. "Our employees are motivated to do an excellent job. And this is helping us accomplish our business goals."
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