GM Plans 10 Weeks Of Factory Downtime To Curb Mounting Inventories
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General Motors has announced additional downtime for its U.S. factories to continue clawing back at mounting inventories. A total of 10 weeks of downtime combined will occur during the second half of the year, according to The Detroit News.
However, GM North America President, Alan Batey, offered reassurance for the high inventory levels and explained the decision.
“Our inventory’s high because we’re going to take 10 weeks out in the back end of the year as we’re modifying our plants particularly in pickup trucks. To be able to cadence that, we have needed to build inventory up a little bit right now because in the back end of the year we’re going to lose 10 weeks of production.”
GM’s current days’ supply sits at around 98, up from 91 last February. A total of 926,170 vehicles await homes and sit on GM dealership lots at the moment.
The automaker did not announce which factories would be affected by the downtime, but the report states the Fairfax plant in Kansas, Fort Wayne plant in Indiana, and Lordstown plant in Ohio are all likely candidates. However, GM’s Fort Wayne assembly, which builds the full-size and heavy-duty variants of Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, will go offline for work related to a new product. That’s despite having a 115-days’ supply of Silverado at the automaker’s disposal.
GM announced downtime for factories late last year, specifically related to passenger cars. The Lansing Grand River assembly in particular was of concern, which assembles the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro, Cadillac ATS and CTS.
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926,170 vehicles await homes and sit on GM dealership lots means that Donald Trump needs to tweet how Americans need to go to their local General Motors dealership or risk the lost of American jobs; Trump’s America First only make sense if Americans are willing to support domestic brands because if Toyota is the biggest seller of cars in the United States then General Motors needs to consider moving factories to Mexico where labor is cheaper to satisfy shareholders.
I am awaiting a new HD truck, they can’t even give an approximate build or delivery date and none on lots in Ontario Canada. I read there are thousands sitting waiting on homes ?
Sounds to me GM is busy building dealer orders nobody wants.
I have a similar but different frustration.
So you go to the Chevrolet web site and build the car you want. Nothing crazy you think. Click the search inventory button and there’s nothing close to your specs in your area.
So you visit a local dealer and he’ll eventually get around to doing a 500 mile search after many attempts to convince you to take what’s on his lot. The 500 mile search turns up nothing because dealers tend to all order the same ‘hot sellers’ [which aren’t so much].
The final step is special ordering. Perfect you think! Then you talk price and find out – at least in my case – it’ll likely cost me $4,000-$6,000 more because who knows what the factory offers are upon delivery and the dealer can’t commit to anything.
I’m sure GM knows better than I why this is brilliant marketing but speaking as a customer they may want to rethink this. ?
I have been waiting 20 weeks on a GMC 3500. Might be time to switch to Ford if they can actually deliver a truck!
I’m in the same boat. Waiting for a truck from a shut down plant. Why can’t they build mine before they shut down? I have money to spend, GM. Apparently you don’t want it. Maybe it really is Government Motors now. I didn’t want to believe it, but…
As a customer…it’s a heck of a time to buy a car from them.
While they have a lot of inventory…holy cow do they have a lot of Cruzes and Malibus on the local lots around me. Plenty of dealers with 3-4 times as many Malibus as Equinoxes and 5 times as many Cruzes as Traxes.
Why not exporting to Europe, Africa and Middle East?
Two words: compliance and market readiness
These two activities alone can take years in planning, so you can’t just “switch on” those markets on an as-needed or required basis.
The middle Eastern market is ready but instead of exporting from Korea, GM has to export from America. The North African market too. A come back to Europe is could be a great win.