Oxford Automotive Ramos Arizpe Plant Achieves One Year With Zero Defects

TROY, Mich., Sept. 3 -- Oxford Automotive, Inc.'s manufacturing plant in Ramos Arizpe is celebrating its fourth year of operation in a big way -- racking up 365 days with zero defective parts out of 3,768,032 produced.

Oxford Automotive is a $1 billion Tier 1 supplier of engineered metal components, assemblies and modules to the automotive industry worldwide.

Oxford's Ramos plant does blanking, stamping and assemblies for OEM and automotive supplier customer plants in Mexico, like General Motors, Chrysler, Inergy, Visteon and Rassini. The plant also produces Class-A panels from steel and aluminum.

"Quality is a very important part of how we do business, and we are very proud to have achieved this goal at Ramos," said Antonio Matar, plant manager. "The fact that we have had no rejected parts in more than 365 days is a tribute to the dedicated, hard-working people we employ here."

The Ramos plant, built in 1999, was the third manufacturing plant Oxford built in Mexico, and at that time Oxford was recognized in the industry for building the facility and installing the presses (and getting them running) in just 11 months. The plant is currently a 360,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility with 583 people working more than 30 presses and more than 63 robots, producing Class-A closure assemblies, underbody assemblies, wheel houses, rear compartments and front floor assemblies.

Oxford's plant in Ramos has QS-9000, ISO-09001 and ISO-14000 certification.

Oxford Automotive, Inc., with headquarters in Troy, Mich., is a leading Tier 1 supplier of specialized metal-formed assemblies and related services. The company, which is privately held, currently has 7,200 employees at 33 locations in nine countries, with technology centers in the United States, France, Germany and Italy. Annual sales in 2002 were $1 billion.