[URBAN NOTE] "Bombardier’s Mexico problem"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc is skeptical of the idea, hinted at by Bombardier, that production problems at the company's Mexico plants are responsible for the delays in delivering streetcars to Toronto.

According to the latest pronouncements from company executives, the epic shemozzle that is the TTC’s Bombardier streetcar contract — for 204 low-floor vehicles, at a cost of $993 million — will, henceforth, be dealt with in a hard-headed, business-like manner as befits a blue chip multi-national. Heads have rolled, blame has been apportioned, and attention is now focused, laser-like, on a real, honest-to-god, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die deadline: 2019.

Bombardier’s explanation for the fiasco is that components for the so-called Flexity vehicle, made on a sub-assembly line in a giant factory in Sahagun, Mexico, were inadequate, and thus held up the manufacturing process in Thunder Bay. But, as TTC CEO Andy Byford has noted, the company is also talking about “adding capacity” as a means of catching up on all those back orders.

If you think about it, those two explanations don’t exactly align. Indeed, I feel that plenty of skepticism about Excuse A — subpar components — is warranted as we try to figure out what the hell went wrong. After all, this wasn’t ever a case of measuring twice/cutting once.

Bombardier is a highly integrated manufacturer and it operates — as do all multi-nationals — with a network of global supply chains that connect its far-flung operations to one another and hundreds of sub-contractors. According to Bombardier itself, the Sahagun complex has produced major sub-components for vehicles purchased by transit agencies in New York, Kaula Lampur and Vancouver, which purchased Bombardier’s monorail cars for the Skytrain network expansion (those “Innovia” vehicles were also deployed in 2014 in Sao Paulo in time for the FIFA World Cup).

Yet as far as I’ve been able to determine, quality problems have not surfaced with these other customers. Indeed, Bombardier’s Mexican executives in 2013, reported Bloomberg, touted the Sahagun plant as a platform to sell more train systems and engineering services throughout Latin America, but especially Mexico – hardly evidence of chronic quality-control issues.