Globally, the largest supplier of automotive seating is Michigan-based Adient. The company designs seat systems, including the fabric, springs, levers, and control technology, and builds them at 220 facilities around the world. Annually, the company supplies 23 million seat systems to major automakers.

Despite its number-one position in terms of sales, Adient has struggled since it was spun off from Johnson Controls several years ago. In contrast to its competitors, Adient failed to generate a profit for many quarters during that period, despite sales growth. Analysts identified the problem as a failure to operate efficiently enough for the slim profit margins that are typical for makers of auto components. In 2018, the company brought in a new CEO with a strong background in manufacturing, Douglas Del Grosso.

Even before the arrival of Del Grosso, teams were making progress on improving efficiency. A notable example is the Adient factory in Lerma, Mexico. Adient Lerma leads the company in its systems for continuous improvement, by assigning all of its employees to high-performance teams. All are required to learn not only a particular job but also the hundreds of manufacturing practices at the plant, principles of quality improvement, and safety standards. Every team meets weekly, bringing together employees handling different functions, to engage in problem solving in eight areas: efficiency, safety, quality, continuous improvement, scrap rates, total productive maintenance, the 5S system for organizing and maintaining workspaces, and empowerment of people (measured by turnover, absenteeism, and job rotation). As teams solve problems, they earn cs for high performance. Many of the teams are self-managed as well as empowered to make improvement decisions.

The use of teamwork at Adient Lerma has made all the employees familiar with the company’s performance objectives. Employees become experts in how to make the facility function better, and they personally care about improvement. In 2017 alone, the teams crafted more than 100 projects that cut costs by $1.38 million. That success positioned the company to win enough new sales and investment to announce a major expansion of the facility.

At Adient Sunderland (in the UK), management put together a team of decision makers to expand the use of Industry 4.0 (automated technology) and make the facility a model for the rest of the company. The team identified the most significant problem areas, prepared a list of ideas, prioritized them, and implemented the top-ranked 12 ideas. The team most recently has focused on how to move data analysis from simply understanding past results toward being able to predict what will succeed in the future. 

With these wins and Adient’s dominance in market share, the company’s management sees a profitable future. Executives predict they will benefit from customers’ increasing focus on seating technology that delivers a great passenger experience; pursuing this effort offers potential for innovation and new products.

1. In general, how can group norms help the teams at Adient Lerma achieve continuous improvement?

2. How does Adient Lerma motivate the members of its high-performance teams? What could the facility’s managers do to discourage social loafing?

3. Do you think Adient Lerma’s approach of putting all employees on empowered teams could also help the Sunderland facility achieve its goal of using Industry 4.0 technologies? Why or why not?