Chrysler Exec Confident of Pending Factory Restarts
By Michelle Krebs June 3, 2009By Bill Visnic
With its once-ballooned inventories shrinking to more bearable levles - and projected to get uncomfortably low for at least a couple of models - Chrysler will restart at least some of the assembly plants in its currently-idled manufacturing system by the end of the month.
As an aside while speaking with reporters about Chrysler's May sales results, Steve Landry, Chrysler's executive vice president - North American sales, service and parts, said the company will soon decide which operations to restart, and of those facilities, "the majority of the plants will come up by the last week of June."
Almost immediately after Chrysler confirmed on April 30 it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company also said it was shutting down the whole of its manufacturing operations until the bankruptcy process was completed. At the time, Chrysler's bankruptcy was speculated to take as long as three months or more. But if some plants are restarted by the end of this month, they will have been temporarily shuttered for less than two months.
Landry said inventories of some vehicles soon will need replenishment. That includes models such as the Jeep Wrangler, which the company said enjoyed its fifth consecutive month of market-share increase in May. Landry said Chrysler's inventory at the end of May was slightly more than 260,000 units, or about an 86-day supply. The number compares with about 412,000 units at the end of May, 2008.
In another interesting detail, Landry said that essential parts and components (such as body-panel stampings) that are produced in factories soon destined to be owned by the "old" Chrysler and no longer "owned" by the new Chrysler, will continue to be supplied by the old-Chrysler facilities. He said the "new" Chrysler - to be named Chrysler Group LLC when it emerges from bankruptcy as soon as next week - has contracts with the old-Chrysler facilities to maintain the supply chain.
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