Significant investment enhances Bentley Crewe site

Crewe August 25th 2003

The men and women who work for Bentley have a level of commitment and passion that makes Crewe unique in the automotive industry. If the factory at Crewe is 'the world's largest car showroom' then they are undoubtedly the reason, and their pride and knowledge are, for many visitors, the highlights of a visit.

Now, thanks to a £216m investment in the factory and associated supplier tooling, they have the working environment and the resources that their loyalty and skills deserve. On the new production lines of the Continental GT at Crewe, state-of-the-art production technology and traditional craft techniques combine to create a unique Grand Tourer to exceptional standards of precision and performance.

Long term investment from Volkswagen Group
In total, when it purchased the company in 1998, Volkswagen AG pledged a £500m investment programme in Crewe and its products. £216m has been invested in manufacturing the Continental GT, of which £154m has been committed to supplier tooling. The remaining £63m has been spent at Crewe, and represents the largest single investment made at the factory since it was built as an aero engine factory in 1938. The 18-month programme has involved over 400 contractors, and during its course over 12,000 tonnes of rubble and waste were removed. As well as changes to the main production line, new roadways, a lorry park and two new logistics centres have been constructed to accommodate the potential five-fold increase in volume of deliveries to the site.

Almost every manufacturing area of the Crewe site has either been refurbished or created anew. The pilot hall, painted body store, assembly line, test facilities, leather shop, engine assembly line, quality centre, logistics centres and vehicle bond hall are new, whilst the wood shop has been refurbished and expanded. In addition the vehicle engineering centre, styling studio and pre-delivery inspection area are also all new.

Bentley has chosen its core suppliers with care, and the number supplying components and materials for the Continental GT is 250, compared with 500 suppliers for the Arnage T, R and RL models. The result is clearer communication, faster response times and greater cost-efficiencies.

Balanced investment in high technology and handcrafting
The £63m investment in Crewe has brought about radical changes throughout the site. Alterations to the buildings and site cost£13m; the new assembly line and leather shop cost£18m; the engine assembly area investment cost£10m. The expansion of the wood shop and new equipment such as laser-cutters and automated lacquer spraying chambers cost£6m, whilst the new Quality Centre, logistics and related areas account for the remaining £16m.

Whereas the Arnage requires some 450 man-hours of production at Crewe, the Continental GT, thanks to the radically redesigned manufacturing facilities, requires 150 man-hours at Crewe. As such, it is still a hand-crafted and highly labour-intensive car: to put it in context, a typical family hatchback can be produced in just 20 hours.

One of the achievements of the new Crewe production line is that all the elements of Bentley hand-craftsmanship and individuality have been fully retained: only two stations in the entire assembly line make use of robotics, and the production process from beginning to end is still under the control of the skilled men and women of Crewe.

Declarations of independence
The new Crewe and the new Continental GT could not have been created without the far-sighted investment and resources of the Volkswagen Group. Nonetheless, whilst the Group's considerable technology and engineering resource has been vital to the development of the Continental GT, the Board of Bentley Motors was determined that the car's design and manufacture needed to be retained in Crewe for the Continental GT to earn its place as a true inheritor of the Bentley tradition.

The first of these was design; the Continental GT was designed in-house at the Crewe styling studio, by a 40-strong team led by Dirk van Braeckel. Dirk cites as his inspiration the 'emotionality' and 'controlled muscularity' of such iconic Bentleys of the past as the R-Type Continental of 1952 and the Speed Six of 1928. Both in its interior and exterior design the Continental GT shows clear links to the Bentley tradition whilst being a definitive 21st century sporting machine.

The second touchstone of 'Bentleyness' was the engine; unique to Bentley, the twin-turbocharged W12 of the Continental GT is entirely assembled at Crewe. It develops 560PS (552 bhp) and 650Nm (479lb/ft) of torque; figures which give the Continental GT the typical Bentley characteristic of effortless power and inexhaustible reserves.

Car assembly - over 750 people - just two robots
Investment in the car assembly line, including sub-assembly areas and the leather shop, totals £18m. Automation has been used in only two areas of the assembly line: the application of a continuous bead of glazing adhesive for bonding windscreen glass onto the body, and in the millimetre-critical area of engine/body marriage. Everywhere else the judgement of skilled human beings prevails, as is entirely appropriate for the making of a Bentley.

For off-track testing, the Continental GT production line features precision laser wheel and headlight alignment; a full dynamic rolling road with driveline balancing and acoustic checks; water 'monsoon' test chamber and a shake rig. From there the completed car is taken to a new 500m surface test track at the rear of the Crewe plant, which can simulate seven different road conditions.

Wood and leather: Quality takes precedence over time
For many owners, the name Bentley is synonymous with an interior of hand-stitched leather and mirror-matched wood veneer of incomparable colour and lustre. For the Continental GT the manufacturing challenge was to retain the authenticity of a hand-crafted Bentley interior at a new pricing point for the marque.

The £6m invested in the wood shop, now doubled in size, helps to achieve both aims; the laser that cuts the wafer-thin sheets of fine wood veneer to shape is both more precise and less wasteful than the old press cutter method. For environmental reasons as well as to prevent any dust affecting the finish, lacquer is applied robotically. Yet human judgement and craftsmanship are still vital; each wood set for a Continental GT takes 18 hours to complete, more than the number required to produce many mass-market cars from start to finish.

To cut the panels for the leather upholstery, a computer-guided laser cutter determines the optimum use of each hide area. However, it still requires human judgement to select and match the hides and mark each one for flaws, using fluorescent tape that the laser cutter recognises and avoids. The Continental GT's steering wheel is created by hand, double-stitched with two needles simultaneously at specially designed stations.

The new Quality Centre: Exceeding our benchmark standards
Having a quality centre at the heart of the Crewe site was considered essential to ensure that the new Continental GT would meet or exceed benchmark standards of precision and consistency in manufacture. The facility, which cost £4m, has the ability to simulate and test for sunshine, humidity and weathering, and has a complete range of mechanical testing and digital imaging microscopes with up to 1000x magnification. The Quality Centre can measure the accuracy of parts the size of entire car bodies down to tiny components to an accuracy of ½ micron.

People: the cornerstone of Crewe
Despite all the investment in facilities and cutting edge technology, the greatest asset of Bentley remains the 2,800 associates who work at Crewe. Because of the need to gear up for Continental GT production, Bentley Motors has recruited over 1,000 people in the past three years and each new recruit has had training and development programmes to help him or her understand, and one day pass on, the Bentley way of working. Rather than buy 'off the shelf' training programmes the personnel department at Crewe has chosen to develop its own bespoke training schemes that are attuned to the demands and the ethos of the company.
Associates also undergo 'customer awareness training', to help them see the cars and the factory through the eyes of the Bentley owner, and workgroups are organised in teams of no more than six, who meet at the start of every shift to discuss the day's work and any areas of concern that have arisen. Within Crewe, there is a strong emphasis upon promotion from within. The majority of management and team leaderships at Crewe are internal appointments.

Bentley has also created a programme within the Crewe facility, funded by the North West Development Agency, to establish a Centre of Engineering Excellence. When taking on apprentices, school leavers and graduates the company aims wherever possible to recruit locally. A job at Bentley is both well respected and highly sought-after: the last round of recruitment attracted over 2,000 applications for 220 manufacturing positions.

Gearing up for Continental GT
Because of the high level of customer demand for the new Continental GT, the manufacturing team at Crewe is gearing up to prepare for a two-shift working pattern. 220 new employees have been recruited this year and have undergone training to support a second shift, and in September the company plans to undertake the further recruitment of over 350 new associates in order to meet the full human resource requirement for two-shift working. Recruitment will again be centred on the local area.

Tangible pride
Following the Bentley 1-2 at Le Mans in 2003, all six Team Bentley drivers - and the winning car - were invited to the Bentley factory at Crewe for a 'lap of honour', and found themselves almost mobbed by enthusiastic Bentley associates queuing to meet them and see the Speed 8 race car at close quarters.

With its rest areas sited close to the workstations, a recently-built sports and leisure Centre, 'Legends' adjacent to the site, and on-site facilities such as dental care, full medical centre and physiotherapy, Bentley Motors aims to set high standards as an employer. The pride that Crewe's 2800 associates feel in their company is tangible, and whenever visitors tour the factory, it is clear that the people who create the cars by hand are both the brand's best ambassadors and its greatest manufacturing asset.