Around noon, Thursday March 30, the employees of the Toyota factory in Onnaing, near Valenciennes, in the North, left their posts to regroup at the very end of the assembly line, where every 58 seconds, a finished car goes out to be shipped to the end customer. At 12:14 p.m., the ten millionth Yaris produced in the world arrived to applause and small French flags, to be delivered to a couple from Val-d’Oise, invited for the photo.
For the world’s leading manufacturer (10.5 million cars sold in 2022, two million more than Volkswagen), this is not the first model to cross the exceptional threshold of 10 million vehicles sold: there is already the Corolla , RAV4, Hilux, Camry and Land Cruiser. This very select club (25 members) has only one French model, the Renault Clio.
For the 5,043 employees, it’s a source of real pride. And not the only one. In 2022, their plant has become the automotive site in France which has produced the most, in volume, with 255,584 vehicles assembled, i.e. 50,000 more than the previous year. It passed that of Stellantis in Sochaux, whose production fell to 200,000 vehicles, against 265,000 in 2021, and even 515,000 in 2019.
Additional Saturdays
This year, the objective is to release 281,600 cars (better than the 2007 record), with the ambition of reaching 300,000 in 2025. “We are already using all of our production capacities”, explains Nicolas Casier, head of industrial improvement. The factory runs in 3×8. It is also the first Toyota plant to have taken this pace, in November 2002. In Europe, the Yaris is also produced in the Czech Republic.
The automaker has an active recruitment policy
To go further, several conditions are necessary: probably working a few extra Saturdays, but above all reducing the breakdown rate of the 600 robots all along the line, from the ultra-powerful presses, to the paint booths, including the islands Welding. “It is around 8%, it must be reduced to 5%. The only solution is to improve maintenance and above all to develop predictive maintenance”, explains the manager. Easier said than done, even if Toyota has improved the remuneration conditions to recruit more people in these machine maintenance jobs. The shortage is national – Jean Castex, at the RATP, is faced with the same problem – even European.
For all other positions, the car manufacturer also has an active recruitment policy. He announced in July that by the end of 2024, he wanted to recruit 500 people on permanent contracts. 228 contracts have already been finalized, “including 37% of women “, greets Jim Crosbie, president of the site. Visits from high school and college students, partnership with schools, Toyota wants “showing the true face of factory work and the company”, explain its executives. With this observation as a guarantee: since 2001, when the first Yaris was released, the employment curve has been going in the right direction on this site. It started with 1,500 employees to exceed 5,000. It still works with a handful of temporary workers, but after a few months, they are generally offered a long-term CDD − one year to eighteen months − , which allows them to have access to employee benefits: mutual or profit-sharing.
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