Honda of South Carolina Manufacturing Inc. cranked up production Monday — 30 days ahead of schedule, Jeff Helton, Honda’s assistant vice president for production, said.
Honda stopped production March 1 with no layoffs because of the country’s weak economy. All-terrain vehicles and personal watercraft are made at the plant.
“We’re delighted to be able to stay on the schedule we set earlier this year,” Helton said. “The plan was not to produce a product for three months to reduce inventory in the warehouse.
“The ramp-up process should last until the middle of the month. We expect to be back up to full steam by then.”
Associates will become familiar with the units again during ramp up.
“We start off with a smaller number of units,” Helton said. “We’ll max out to 150 units a day by the middle of this month.”
Six hundred associates are working. Eight hundred took advantage of a severance package that was offered earlier this year. Honda employed about 1,500 people in 2008.
“It gave you that feeling of pride today — that we were up and producing a product — just like we felt 11 years ago when we first started production,” Helton said. “That pride is there with the associates and they’re ready to produce a quality product.”
Helton said one shift — from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. — will be operating five days a week.
“We don’t have enough capacity and production right now to warrant going to additional shifts,” he said. “Hopefully, in the future, we’ll get back to that.”
Helton reiterated that Honda of South Carolina had no layoffs. But the associates weren’t idle during the hiatus. They were able to attend Honda of South Carolina University and perform other community service projects.
“We laid out training courses for our associates through Honda of South Carolina University,” he said. “These courses gave them a history of Honda and the Honda philosophy.”
The associates were also taken around to all the different departments in the factory. The idea was to give them an idea what others do so that they will have a better appreciation for what goes on in other areas.
“That, along with many other courses the training department laid out, has done well,” Helton said. “The associates had a great time.”
Employees had their own training manuals with courses to check off. They got certificates for courses completed.
“The associates have been pretty pumped up about the training,” Helton said. “We’re all looking for bigger and brighter things as we go into the future.”
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