Faurecia Opens $64M Columbus Plant

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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFrance-based automotive supplier Faurecia is celebrating the completion of its $64 million manufacturing facility in Columbus. The company says the 400,000 square-foot plant will employ 450 people and produce a new emissions control product for the commercial vehicle industry.
Faurecia already employs more than 1,600 at its two other facilities in Columbus. Dave DeGraaf, president of Faurecia Emissions Control Technologies North America, says the Columbus South facility will feature new technology systems that will allow employees to work more efficiently, experience less physical stress and improve work-life balance.
"Manufacturing is sometimes stereotyped as dirty and requiring few skills," said DeGraaf. "Columbus South contributes to the shifting landscape of the industry to one that is modern, clean and technologically advanced, and aimed at attracting a new generation of employees with different and advanced skillsets."
Some of the new technologies being employed at Columbus South include self-learning autonomous intelligent vehicles, or AIVs, which are used to transport component parts to the assembly line, continuous data collection to give employees the ability to predict and prevent equipment failures and a paperless environment giving employees real-time information.
In an interview last month with Inside INdiana Business reporter Kylie Veleta, DeGraaf said new technologies are "incredibly beneficial."