Auto mileage rules adding local jobs | F&P America Mfg., Inc.

Mar 10, 2014 Press Releases

From the Dayton Daily News By Thomas Gnau

Increasingly stringent federal auto mileage standards are driving a multi-million-dollar expansion — and up to 30 new jobs — at F&P America Manufacturing.

F&P makes suspension parts for General Motors and Honda. GM is turning to lighter, but stronger, steels for its vehicles, making necessary a $26 million investment into two new servo metal-stamping presses — a 3,000-ton press and a 1,000-ton press — at F&P’s 2101 Corporate Drive plant.

Construction on the 50,000-square-foot addition to house the presses will begin in coming weeks. After trial production, mass production of new GM parts starts in January 2016.

The servo presses can be set up so that metal-stamping strokes are shorter and more efficient, taking less time.

“With a servo press, you can control the stroke to any height you want,” said David Harrison, plant managing director.

“So if you’re running very quick material, you can stamp very fast, instead of having to do the whole cycle.”

The new presses will shape new high-strength steels GM needs.

“It’s not a typical, normal mechanical press,” Harrison said.

These aren’t typical, normal times. Automakers must heed coming Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Average fuel economy for automakers’ fleets must improve to 34.1 mpg by 2016, then 54.5 mpg for cars and light trucks by 2025. Industry observers say there will be fewer large vehicles and more fuel-saving technologies, such as “hybrid” power-plants.

There will also be new materials, such as the lighter steels GM will use — the steels making necessary the presses F&P is buying.

“You need lighter materials,” Harrison said. “To go to lighter materials means thinner materials. If you go to thinner materials, you need high-strength materials. To form those high-strength materials, you have to use this technology.”

GM won’t use composite materials, at least not for the parts F&P produces — front and rear sub-frames, roller arms and more. “It’s still steel. But it’s just a higher level of steel,” Harrison said.

And while $26 million may seem like a big investment, Harrison says F&P spends “a lot” on new equipment each year.

The automakers F&P serves update models every several years. “We bring in new equipment all the time,” he said.

F&P has been in Troy since 1994, with 960 workers today. The company is owned by F Tech Japan and has sister plants in Georgia and Canada.

And like so many auto parts suppliers, F&P rises and falls with its customers. New “incremental” business with GM is driving this expansion, Harrison said.

F&P has supplied GM for five years. With its latest GM contract, F&P’s Troy employment should be secure, around 1,000 workers, for the next three to five years, Harrison said.

That’s good news, but the company is probably as big as it can get in Troy, say Harrison and Delane Sloan, the company’s senior manager, human resources. Further expansion would probably require an entirely new facility, they said.

And finding more qualified workers would be a challenge.

“We’re at the top of being able to find qualified, good, dependable people,” Sloan said. “There’s a lot of manufacturing in this region, and there’s a lot of competition (for workers.) To find good, quality people, I think if we went bigger than that, we would struggle."

F&P’s goal is not just to help GM make more energy-efficient vehicles. The company is aiming for “green” certification with its new addition, as well.

Dwight Humbert, F&P facilities manager, said the company is working with Dayton Power & Light, Go Sustainable Energy, which performs energy audits, and its construction contractors to earn “DRG III” energy certification, a Dayton Regional Green Task Force standard formed in 2007.

“We all sat around the table, looked at the design (of the new building), looked at the prints,” Humbert said. The idea is to “save energy, be a good corporate citizen and reduce our carbon footprint.”

F&P is also working to reduce plant waste that heads to landfills, he said.

“We’re putting in the best technologies,” Harrison said.

Contact this reporter at 937-225-2390 or email Thomas.Gnau@coxinc.com.

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