The growing automative assembly industry in Saudi Arabia has been bolstered with news that SAMCO (Saudi Automotive Manufacturing Company) has received the top prize globally from MAN Truck & Bus for its Jeddah assembly plant.
SAMCO’s Jeddah assembly plant was opened in early in 2009, and has now won first place in a global best practice competition for securing quality and increasing efficiency of its assembly plant.
That puts SAMCO ahead of MAN’s assembly partners around the world. Second place was awarded to the assembly operation in South Africa, and third to Malaysia.
The plant has a production capacity of 3,000 units per year, and has been an important pillar of MAN’s Middle East growth strategy in one of the fastest growing regions for MAN across the globe.
SAMCO received the award at the xKD Customer Days 2014 competition in Munich. xKD stands for any level of break-down (Completely-Knocked-Down/ Breakdown-level or Semi-Knocked-Down) of a truck in the assembly process and describes different truck assembly kits such as TiB (Truck-in-the-Box) or CiB (Chassis-in-the-Box).
And the company came in for high praise from MAN Truck & Bus AG board member for sales and marketing, Heinz-Jürgen Löw.
“SAMCO has a very passionate and committed team with a high work ethic. In their best practices, they demonstrated continuous development of the production process such as an efficient supply chain management, innovative equipment designs for the production line and a sophisticated training system for all employees for which SAMCO has been already awarded in 2013.”
Ken McIntosh, general manager at SAMCO, received the award.
“To be recognized by our peers is really the highest accolade we could have ever wished for, as they all work within the same xKD arena as SAMCO, building and promoting MAN as a premium product in the many challenging, different and diverse market sectors throughout the world,” said McIntosh.
Löw added the manufacturer would like to increase xKD volumes globally.
“The xKD business is important for the company’s growth. We want to increase the quantities in the xKD countries,” he explained. “We can proudly confirm that we have the highest premium quality standards in our production, irrespective of whether the vehicle is assembled in Europe or in the rest of the world.”