NORDLINGEN, Germany—Six-axis robots and a rotary indexing table are the heart of a high-speed automated assembly system that produces 200,000 automotive sensors daily.
AUBURN HILLS, MI—Chrysler sold 171,606 units in March, a 5 percent increase compared with sales in March 2012 and the automaker’s best monthly total since December 2007.
WASHINGTON—New orders for durable goods increased $12.4 billion or 5.7 percent in February to $232.1 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday. Orders have increased five of the past six months.
Despite recent inroads by aluminum, copper will remain the dominant material used in automotive wiring harness applications over the next few decades. That’s because harness weight can easily be reduced by using finer wires wherever electrically feasible.
A fully automatic stripping and crimping system might be the “glamour” technology of wire harness assembly shops. However, there’s still plenty of work for handheld electric, pneumatic and manually powered crimping tools.
In early March, UAW officials met with workers from Nissan Motor Co.’s assembly plant in Smyrna, TN, to lay the groundwork for a third union representation vote. Plant employees turned down the UAW by a 2-to-1 margin in 2001. A 1989 attempt to organize the plant also failed.
Today, the plant where BMW assembles the Mini is celebrating its 100th birthday. The first motor car to emerge from the factory in Oxford, England, on March 28, 1913, was a Bullnose Morris Oxford.
TOKYO—Mitsubishi Motors has reported overheating problems with lithium-ion batteries made by the same company that supplied the malfunctioning batteries for Boeing’s Dreamliner.