Stellantis To Shut Down Jeep® Cherokee (KL) Production This Next Week!
Automaker Also Has Announced Cuts At Tipton Transmission Plant...
Stellantis has announced that it will idle its Belvidere Assembly Plant (BVAP) which manufacturers the midsized Jeep® Cherokee (KL) for the week of December 6th. The reason behind the shutdown in production… lack of semiconductor chips.
After what looked like a very productive November in its North American operations, the stop in production at the Belvidere, Illinois plant is a tough blow to its workforce just before the holidays. The BVAP facility has faced more shutdown time than any other plant in Stellantis’ North America operations since the beginning of the pandemic.
This has been caused by slow sales from the Cherokee on a global scale, lack of semiconductor chips, and the fact that the plant only produces one vehicle at the moment.
Most recently, Stellantis announced that it will cut another 400 additional jobs at the plant by Friday, January 14th due to the reasons above.
Stellantis North America released the following statement about the upcoming week’s shutdown…
“Stellantis continues to work closely with our suppliers to mitigate the manufacturing impacts caused by the various supply chain issues facing our industry. Due to the unprecedented global microchip shortage, production at the Belvidere (Ill.) Assembly Plant will be down the week of Dec. 6.”
Stellantis also recently announced that it would be eliminating 200 jobs from its Tipton Transmission Plant in Indiana, citing the decreased production due to the global semiconductor shortage. The cut will permanently eliminate one shift at the 863 employees ran facility.
“Tipton Transmission has reduced one crew of assembly due to lower volumes impacted by downtime and other production actions taken as a result of the global microchip shortage,” said a Stellantis spokesperson in a statement.
The automaker is also calling for the layoff of “voluntary” and “temporary” production personnel, as it expects that most of the 200 employees laid off from the Tipton facility will apply for other openings at other plants.
Those openings include the repurposed Kokomo Engine Plant, which turned the idled Kokomo Transmission Plant II facility into a state-of-the-art engine manufacturing operation to produce the turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four-cylinder (also known as the GME-T4, or Global Medium Engine – Turbo 4-Cylinder).
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