Day 161: Lamborghini and Pagani; Florence

Our last day of factory tours included Lamborghini and Pagani. First up was Lamborghini - after a train ride to Bologna from Firenze, and a drive. The area around Bologna is very pastoral, primarily an agricultural area. 

Yet this area has some of the world's top end car makers... Little known fact: Lamborghini started by making tractors.

Above is Favio Lamborghini (nephew of Ferrucio) showing us the first Lamborghini, made with parts salvaged from Allied tanks abandoned after WWII. However, we were primarily here to see the factory:

Lamborghini is owned by Audi (VW group) and they spent some serious time in this plant. There were Audi trainers on the floor as the Huracon line is still being ramped up and tweaked. We are some of the first people to tour this line -- that's pretty lucky!

Stats:

Employees: 1200 with 300-400 in production

Shifts: 1 shift of 8 hrs except for the carbon fibre body shop who work 3 shifts.

Models: Aventador and Huracon

Production: 8 cars/ day and ~2000/ year

Takt time: 90 min for Aventador and 35 min for Huracon

Visual management: takt and operation boards, work instruction pushed electronically via barcode scanning, huddles, quality KPIs displayed.

CI initiatives: hand-written CI ideas with owner and status (PDCA style indicators)!

Observations: The leather shop is probably the least lean in the factory, it's all hand work. It's really impressive, but it's a lot of labour. 15 hrs and 8 big hides per car. The new Huracon line is all Audi style set-up, you can see their influence, and their parts - lots of Audi parts in the Huracon. In fact, many of the workers were quite young, I suspect this is to help integration - being able to teach new employees the Audi way of manufacturing cars. The engines are built out of house, and are actually broken in on the bench! 23 hrs to build and test one engine! 

After our visit, we visited Pagani briefly. 

Hand made carbon fibre chassis. Super light and super fast. They only make 20 cars a year and have a waiting list of 15 months. They were adding more space in a near-by building to double capacity. Mr. Pagani himself coming out to say hi and show us his personal Zonda:

Above is the newest model, the Huayra. There were at least 5 cars on the factory floor in various states of completion. It takes 5 to 6 months to complete one car, 3 weeks just for the body. 

After this short stop, we visited the Lamborghini family museum, so here comes the pics!

We caught the train back to Florence and had our last group dinner. Florence is amazingly beautiful.

Now that our tours are over, and I have some time for hansei, I can think back on all the plants we visited, and try to gather my thoughts and observations. My biggest takeaway, I think, is the balance for efficiency and beauty each of these manufacturers sought. They all want to produce the highest quality cars, that are beautiful and technically superior, and there is no room for compromise. They each appeal to drivers in their own way, but the fundamentals of technology, design, esthetic, and quality are always there.

I have two more days to explore Florence, but am anxious to get home.

AMac