How to build a car: Inside Hyundai's Czech plant

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I've never been great at maths and working with my hands is not a strong point.

So a $500-per-second guess at the price of my latest gaffe is likely to be well wide of the mark, even if it seems like a fair starting point for bringing Hyundai's European production line to a halt.

We've come to the Czech Republic to learn how to build cars.  

And this lesson isn't going to come cheap.

Drive's David McCowen inside the Czech Hyundai plant at Nosovice. Photo: Brian Hausler

Czech it out

Like most mainstream car companies, Hyundai has branched out well beyond its home nation to assemble cars around the world. Australian examples of the Tucson SUV come from South Korea and the Czech Republic, where the brand also assembles its popular i30 for European customers, as well as the ix20 compact crossover not available in Australia.

Built as a green fields project south of Ostrava - closer to Poland than Prague - the plant represents a $2.2 billion investment, the largest foreign investment in the nation, and a source of employment to 3400 onsite staff and a further 7000 workers for supply companies who keep the factory rolling.

We joined the workforce for two days, starting in a stamping plant where 40-tonne dies press sheets of steel into pieces that become a car's core structure. The blanking press applies around 5400 tonnes of pressure to steel sections that become one of 17 body panels including a car's bonnet, roof, doors, or floorpan. My first job is to polish the stamping mould for the inner skin of bonnets used in the new Tucson, making sure no imperfections find their way onto finished pieces.

Inside the Czech Hyundai plant at Nosovice. Photo: Brian Hausler

This plant is a modern, clean and efficient space designed from the ground up as a state-of-the-art facility. It feels markedly different from Australian manufacturing centres that adapted to new challenges and technology over a course of decades. Instead, this is the result of a world's fifth-largest car company executing its vision for the perfect manufacturing plant.

The process is jaw-dropping.

From the brutal forces of the stamping plant to the utterly captivating speed and co-ordination of robots that weld metal pieces into a car's core skeleton, or the hand-polished checks of a car's paintwork to the immense scale of the operation, it's a magnificent sight to behold.

Hands-on

But we didn't just witness Hyundai's manufacturing plant. We helped build a handful of Tucson models for Australia, to help gain a better understanding of the skill and technology that goes into every new car.

There's not a whole lot of human input into the first half of the manufacturing process. We checked panels for potential errors in the stamping plant, where a seam-welding issue caused headaches for the local crew, before feeding panels into spot-welding machines that fuse separate pieces of metal into complex structures.

We filed down minor flaws in bodywork and sent partially-completed cars into the paint shop, were 50 robots coat models in a variety of colours including the seven finishes available in the new Tucson that represents nearly 70 per cent of production at the plant.

Cars come down the line in the approximate order that they are ordered by customers, which makes for a sporadic mix of Tucson, i30 and ix25 models in left and right-hand-drive, along with a variety of colours and trim models, two-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive, petrol and diesel.

The possible permutations stretch into the thousands, and it made me doubly appreciate the effort Hyundai's local arm goes into testing and custom-ordering suspension components for local models, a point that proves something of a nuisance on the production line.

Part of me expected the models to be made in batches - 50 red i30 hatchbacks followed by 50 grey Tucson SUVs - but that's not how it's done.

A jumbled order makes life interesting for the crew in final assembly, who refer to data screens and paper build sheets to understand the requirements of individual cars coming down the line.

The hall is roughly the size of 16 football pitches, where an ever-moving production line snakes through dozens of stations staffed with people who work across three eight-hour shifts in a plant that runs 24 hours per day.

We start off by fixing badges to the back of cars - a fairly simply process that uses magnetic frames to make sure logos and lettering are perfectly aligned.

The next job was tougher, as we moved down the line bolting hinges into doors and clipping pre-assembled door cards loaded with speakers, handles and power window switches into doorframes. It's difficult, fiddly work that takes a little while to master - particularly if you are going to finish each door in the minute-or-so required at each station.

Like the door cards, the Tucson's headlights, radiator support bracket and other pieces of front-end hardware arrive as a complete unit (from a supplier in Slovakia), which we then carefully align before bolting into place.

And this is where my major problem took root.

Using an air-powered driver to fasten supporting bolts for the front end, I eased off the trigger as soon as the first bolt was seated, listening as the tool turned from singing a smooth hum to a chuntering rattle. The crew on deck weren't keen on that approach, preferring that I use a good extra second or two of torque to make damn sure the bolt wasn't going anywhere. Fair enough.

Having used four bolts to truly secure the front-end assemblies of a few Tucsons, I passed the pneumatic tool back to the pros and walked to the fuel tank installation area.

Inside the Czech Hyundai plant at Nosovice. Photo: Brian Hausler           

Whoops

There, a well-drilled worker stood underneath a Tucson suspended from an overhead gantry, walking along with the car while expertly securing the vital piece.

Beckoning me over, he hands me the rattle gun with a handful of bolts. We line the fuel tank up with the car's underbody, and he points out the first of four places to secure. I take the tool, and send the bolt in just as the headlight crew instructed me to screw it all the way in, with plenty more for good measure. Fuel tank man swears in Czech, so I set the driver to reverse and back off the bolt a tad.

I struggle to line up the second bolt hole amid the Tucson's innards, taking far too long to secure the second point. The third fares even worse, as the bolt jams, seemingly cross-threaded by my mechanical ineptitude.

Realizing that tank-man's "Hovno!" aligns with my "ah, shit" expression better than any of my bolts could, I step back to allow the man to examine the situation.

It did not go well. Several blokes put an emergency halt to the production line as they took care of my personal touch, ensuring that the car would be safe on the road.

Tick, tock.

The line stays still for several agonizing minutes while they get the job done. I'm mortified, and immediately reminded of why I use a laptop and not an impact driver to pay the rent.

Inside the Czech Hyundai plant at Nosovice. Photo: Brian Hausler

Quality street

With the Tucson eventually sorted and its last few components bolted into place, the car heads toward the plant's exhaustive quality control checks. Every vehicle runs through a light tunnel where carefully trained staff with an eye for detail check for imperfections. Cars are put through their paces on a dynamometer, a 3.2-kilometre test track and examined from above and below, inside and out, for any potential flaws.

The plant prides itself on its attention to detail, with officials telling us that it outpaces other Hyundai facilities around the world by having fewer errors in its vehicles, and that Skoda's Czech facility uses six times the workforce to build twice as many cars.

Korea advice

One bloke proudly told the Australian contingent that "unlike Korea we are not on a permanent strike here", alluding to the penchant for industrial action within Hyundai's domestic workforce.

Frank Ahrens, former global head of public relations for Hyundai, wrote for Forbes.com in October that the brand's global manufacturing expansion into nations such as the Czech Republic was, in part, "to make Hyundai less dependent on its annually striking, militant Korean workforce".

Korean workers were on strike during our visit as part of a protracted campaign that cost Hyundai around 140,000 units of vehicle production at a cost that could build another European plant or two.

Workers in Ulsan reportedly voted to refuse a deal that included an increase in base pay, a 3.3 million won ($3800) cash bonus and 350 per cent of a month's salary as a one-off payment. 

The manufacturing union in Ulsan, South Korea, is infamous for its propensity to strike as well as the scope of its demands.

The Wall Street Journal said in 2015 that Hyundai workers were demanding 30 per cent of a year's salary as a one-off bonus in addition to a 7.8 per cent increase in pay, while Reuters reported in 2013 that union workers sought gold medallions, a 30 per cent share of company profits and other cash bonuses as part of negotiations with the company.

At the time, the average salary for Hyundai's union workers in Korea was 94 million Korean won - around $108,000 at current exchange rates - before other perks such as free university education for workers' children are factored in.

That might not sit well with Czech Hyundai workers who make around 1140 Euros ($1650) per month - less than $20,000 per year, but more than the average salary in their region. It's easy to see why manufacturing in Australia was economically unsustainable.

Having toiled on the line for a couple of days, I know I'd much rather the equivalent $591 paid to Korean workers for my time, as opposed to the $108 earned by Czech staff.

If nothing else, that might afford a chance to make good a $500-per-second mistake.

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