FPT Industrial’s engine plant in Bourbon-Lancy, France, is the first of its world major factories to acquire the Gold Level certification in the World Class Manufacturing (WCM) programme.
The site represents a leading centre in the world of both diesel and natural gas engines, providing a wide range of customers with the best solutions, tailor made on the specific needs of the various applications from on and off-road vehicles to marine and power generation.
With a production capacity of around 80,000 engines a year, and employing over a 1,200 people, the factory has specialised since 1998 in the production of Cursor C8, C9, C10, C11, C13 and C16 series engines, with 77 technical types and over 5700 options available.
The road to this honour was built on solid pillars and high knowledge, and key gold points mentioned were: quality, machining maintenance and karakuri system. As an industry 4.0 strongly focused plant, Bourbon-Lancy has applied its built-in innovative and research-oriented approach in a number of sector ground-breaking projects, mainly in the IT and logistic applications, such as the introduction of the Sherpa smart and mobile collaborative robots along the production line. All these activities, projects and team efforts, in addition to internationally recognised by important scientific publications, have been honoured by the label Industry of the Future, that acknowledges the most emblematic industrial achievements in France.
The Bourbon-Lancy plant is well known in the Region for its commitment to sustainability, with a number of projects focused on minimising the impact of industrial activities and on protecting the biodiversity of the surrounding environment, making it the ideal home of the most successful natural gas-powered engines on the market. As a testament of it, in March, the 10,000th Cursor 13 NG engine rolled out from its production lines.
“After receiving Bronze level certification in 2008 and Silver level in 2010, this incredible achievement rewards the hard work of the whole plant team of the last years,” says Luc Bernardini, plant manager of FPT Industrial’s Bourbon Lancy plant. “Each of us must be more than proud of what we were able to get working together day after day, always believing that we had the will, the capability and the determination to make it to the top.”
“I would like to thank from the bottom of my hearth all the present and past workers of Bourbon-Lancy for this glorious accomplishment,” added Annalisa Stupenengo, CEO of FPT Industrial. “When you can count on people and teams like those, even the most challenging and apparently impossible gold dream can become true.”
