+(1680x1260)-.jpg "marcopolo bus factory")
A factory was opened in Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina, in 1998. The company earned BRL 13 million (about $12.4 million) in 1995, however, and began selling American Depositary Receipts, the equivalent of shares of stock, that year (but later dropped its listing). Marcopolo lost BRL 2.8 million (about $2.5 million) in 1994, when a drastic national anti-inflation program made the company's exports uncompetitive in price. No waste was tolerated production teams were expected to monitor such details as how many liters of paint were being used on each bus. Millman described Marcopolo as "obsessive about every aspect of its business, from the cleanliness of its factory floors to the mental health of its workers." Having adopted Japanese just-in-time inventory-control systems, the company carefully checked the ordering and installation of most of the 100,000 components needed, including seats, railings, dashboards, doors, and panels. and National Car Rental System Inc., which were using the vehicles as airport shuttles. Half of its production was being exported to customers in 40 countries. of Mexico to supply bus bodies and technology.īy 1994, when Millman visited the Caixas do Sul factory, Marcopolo was making and assembling bus bodies on chassis made by Mercedes-Benz, Scania, and other big automakers. The following year it signed a contract with Dina Autobuses, S.A. In 1991 it established its first factory abroad, in Coimbra, Portugal. When they returned, they began imparting what they had learned to the workers, organizing them into teams and stressing quality control. In 1986 he and the company's production head went to Japan, visited many factories, and studied their manufacturing methods. Under Bellini's direction, Marcopolo met calamity by seeking customers outside Brazil. The company had to close the two factories it had acquired. By 1980 it was making 15,000 units a year, but the oil-price and debt-crisis shocks that struck Brazil in this period reduced production to fewer than 6,000 vehicles in 1983.
Marcopolo began issuing stock shares on the São Paulo exchange in 1978. In 1968 the company introduced a bus model called Marcopolo, and three years later it took that name for its own. By the late years of the decade it was turning out bodies for trucks with adaptable chassis. Nicola expanded in the 1960s and bought two other bodybuilders, one in Caixas do Sul, the other in Porte Alegre. Whatever the customer wanted." By contrast, he said, the company's rivals, "were arrogant with customers, setting the price and the style and telling the people, 'Take it or leave it.' We went out with our shirtsleeves up, looking for customers everywhere." Its first export order was in 1961, from a bus company in Uruguay. "We could make special seats," Bellini told Millman, "give the customer a bigger or smaller luggage rack, or fruit racks for buses in farm towns. could not compete with bigger bodybuilders on price or delivery time, but it offered superior service. However, in 1957 it opened a real manufacturing facility in a suburb of Caixas do Sul. "Everything was handmade." By 1954, when the company was incorporated, it was producing bus bodies however, with only 15 employees, it essentially remained an artisanal enterprise, taking three months to make a single one.
#MARCOPOLO BUS FACTORY TRIAL#
"It was all trial and error at first," Bellini recalled to Joel Millman, writing for Forbes almost a half-century later. The first order came from a local commuter bus line, and Nicola built the body on a truck chassis. Settled by Italian immigrants to Brazil's southernmost state, this city abounded in small-scale manufacturing enterprises, many of them founded by skilled metal and wood craftsmen working out of shops in backyards and basements. Under the name Nicola & Cia., it plated and painted cabins for trucks in Caixas do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul. The company was founded by Paulo Bellini and six other young mechanics in 1949. Marcopolo sells its vehicles under such brand names as Volare, Fratello, Andare, Paradiso, Viaggio, Torino, and Viale, and it has factories in five other countries: Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, and South Africa. The company also repairs these vehicles and makes automotive parts. Its production includes bodies for both urban and highway-transportation buses, and for motor coaches, vans, and recreational vehicles. manufactures almost half of all buses and microbus bodies built in Brazil and is the third largest manufacturer of bus bodies in the world.
0 kommentar(er)
