Vehicles parked by chip shortage to get finished
HD pickup assembly speeds up by 1,000 per month
General Motors has just announced that it is planning to increase deliveries of some of its popular models, helping to restore inventories affected by the ongoing semiconductor shortage and best-balance the chips it has with the vehicles customers want.
It will start with boosting production of the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD pickups, with around 1,000 more of those per month starting in mid-July. This isn’t as much a chip-related issue as an overall capacity one as it is the result of improved production rates at the Michigan plant that builds them.
GM built some Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups at its Missouri plant, then held them at the plant as it waited for parts affected by the semiconductor shortage. Those parts are arriving, and the plant expects to have 30,000 total extra units leave from now until the week of July 5th. The vehicles will need to be tested by workers there to make sure that the final assembly was done right.
Some other plants have smaller volumes that will undergo the same component install and dynamic testing in June and July sending more vehicles to dealers.
GM has also said that it will cancel the previously scheduled vacation downtime weeks for plants building the automaker’s “most capacity-constrained” products.
“The global semiconductor shortage remains complex and very fluid, but the speed, agility and commitment of our team, including our dealers, has helped us find creative ways to satisfy customers,” said Phil Kienle, GM NA manufacturing VP.
Those measures have lead GM to pull ahead some of its projected semiconductor deliveries into Q2 instead of the second half of the year. They now expect significantly better 1st half financial results, though the automaker says that facilities in North and South America, as well as Asia, will be impacted through the end of July.
