General Motors plans to increase shipments of its vehicles over the coming weeks as the pressure of the semiconductor shortage begins to ease.
In its recently-released financial results, GM said its figures for the first half of the year would be “significantly better” than previously forecast, having indicated that profit would fall to about $500 million in the second quarter from more than $3 billion in the first quarter.
Now, GM has confirmed that it will increase production of its heavy-duty pickup trucks at its Flint, Michigan plant in July, increasing output by about 1,000 trucks per month. In addition, various factories will forego typical summer vacation closures to help recover lost production. The New York Times reports that GM will also ship approximately 30,000 midsize pickups to dealers that were originally assembled without select electronic features and kept at the Wentzville, Missouri plant until they could be finished.
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“The global semiconductor shortage remains complex and very fluid,” GM’s vice president for North America manufacturing and labor relations Phil Kienle said in a statement. “Customer demand continues to be very strong, and G.M.’s engineering, supply chain and manufacturing teams have done a remarkable job maximizing production of high-demand and capacity-constrained vehicles.”
GM has revealed that it will be able to increase production of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra because it has worked out ways to improve efficiency on the Flint production line.
“We were already on production target. But every year we go through productivity improvement,” shop chairman for UAW Local 598 that represents workers at the plant, Eric Welter, told the Detroit Free Press. “We increased line speed and that increase will equal 1,000 more pickups built a month.”
