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Stellantis to recall over 250,000 US vehicles due to improperly sealed air bag, NHTSA says

Stellantis to recall over 250,000 US vehicles due to improperly sealed air bag, NHTSA says

Reuters5 hours ago

June 28 (Reuters) - Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI), opens new tab is recalling 250,651 vehicles in the U.S. due to an improperly sealed side curtain air bag, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Saturday.
The recall affects certain 2022-2025 Pacifica and Voyager vehicles.

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Miller's most spectacular achievement to date has been the 18-month conversion of the former Vauxhall Astra plant at Ellesmere Port, near Liverpool, to the manufacture of battery-powered delivery vans for five Stellantis marques: Vauxhall, Opel, Citroën, Peugeot and Fiat. It has been a vital move in rescuing volume vehicle manufacturing in this country. Now that this EV factory conversion has been achieved, Miller is turning her hand to running Stellantis's massive new national parts distribution centre, located just down the road from the van plant at Ellesmere, where the company is spending £500 million to expand and improve the way it delivers components to its customers in the UK and Ireland. The parts centre project has required another wholesale reorganisation, entailing both the redeployment of car-making people and the importation of new workers into a business that, despite its size and scale, has to be very labour-intensive. 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She achieved rapid promotions, first to senior process engineer and then to a manager's job in the paint engineering area, launching new technology in Ford plants across Europe. Paint doesn't suit everyone, but Miller earned an early reputation for being willing to try anything and work anywhere. 'Crossing the Irish Sea to go to university was the big move,' she says. 'After that, anything was okay.' Pretty soon Miller was heading to Chicago on a two-year paint unit training scheme that extended to four. 'It was a situation that occurs in many companies,' she says. 'You go on a training scheme and the money runs out, so they get you to do the job anyway. It was great training because no one else knew about paint, so I had to make the decisions. It worked out okay.' Miller's career progressed more rapidly than most young engineers her age, but she's careful not to give herself much credit. 'I had very good mentors,' she says. 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So she worked happily for several years at the Ford Transit plant in Southampton, leaving before it closed in 2013 because its manager was heading for Aston Martin (then a Ford company) and asked her to join him, bringing her paint expertise. It made sense, because her husband, an American, was already a paint supplier there. Aston Martin paint is quite different from Ford Transit paint, she found: 'I started off thinking five jobs an hour would be easier than 60 jobs an hour, but that was completely wrong. True, Aston paint was very different – many more coats and lots of polishing – but the big difference was the fact that the operators had so much to remember. The Transit takt (process) time was around five minutes, explains Miller, whereas at Aston it was more like 25 minutes. People had to remember 25 minutes' work rather thanfive, which is clearly much more difficult. 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' They knew if there was a problem and I could fix it, I'd do it right away.' Astra production ended in April 2022 – with quality levels higher than they had ever been. Then came the bombshell decision to start making Stellantis electric vans. 'It was a funny time,' says Miller. 'The whole of Europe thought this plant would never reopen, but we already knew [then Stellantis boss] Mr Tavares had decided to keep it going because he'd discovered – from the first time he visited us – that there was an ethos among Ellesmere people that we'd find a way to do whatever was needed to keep the place open. ' In order to make the changes, the factory was shut for 18 months. Staff who couldn't make cars helped move robots and build new rest areas. Managers went to Madrid, where changes planned for Ellesmere had already been made, to see exactly what was needed. Everyone adapted, in no small part because Miller's can-do culture had spread throughout the place. By September 2023 electric vans were flowing down the lines. The success isn't complete. For Miller and Stellantis, the current 20,000-unit annual output isn't nearly enough, mostly because they believe the government's re-adoption of 2035 as an ICE cut-off date has hurt demand for Ellesmere's all-EV output. As a stopgap, they have begun building bodies for an ICE van plant in Algeria (boosting output to 50,000 units), and production will soon be further augmented by the arrival of a range of larger, Vivaro-sized electric vans for the five Stellantis marques. Ultimately, demand will be much higher – perhaps as high as the plant's 100,000-a-year, seven-day, three-shift capacity. Ellesmere Port is ready. Miller, meanwhile, is several months into her demanding new project – and she will be happy with more after that. She has spent most of her three-plus decades in automotive providing a great role model for other people, not just women, but she says the lessons she has learned have been important in her own personal development, too. 'I'll never forget how those early days at Dagenham flipped my mind,' she says. 'They taught me that if you think clearly, you can do anything. I started applying those principles to my own life and found that there's nearly always a way you can make things happen. This industry has been a great teacher.' Join our WhatsApp community and be the first to read about the latest news and reviews wowing the car world. Our community is the best, easiest and most direct place to tap into the minds of Autocar, and if you join you'll also be treated to unique WhatsApp content. You can leave at any time after joining - check our full privacy policy here. Next Prev In partnership with

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