I just heard from my dealer and Dodge Regional Manager that the Caliber plant has been temporarily shut down due to a "fuel" delivery problem with the Caliber. No detals but it appears that CDX wants to fix the problem to avoid a full recall. All Calibers already made will be shipped. No estimated time for shutdown.

The Regional Manager also indicated that they have yet to put the 3rd shift in place but hope to do so soon at the plant as they gear up for the Jeep Compass and Patriot models.

Ordered my CXT Caliber on June 12 and still wating or a build date; no VIN yet but is part of the dealer allocation; thinking it may be a Christmas present at this point...[:@]

 

The dreaded "hard turn stall" perhaps. Least they admit there is a problem.

 

Just curious but maybe as they gear for the Patriot,I have seen 5 Jeep Compass models on the street here where I live and the dealer where I bought my Caliber has one on the lot,I was told the 3rd shift built the Compass.
You find out seeing is believing!!!!!

 

I just looked at Belvedere production screen and thev built over 700 vehicles today on two shifts and yesterday they built over a 1000 on three shifts. Someones BSing you

 

Maybe I am getting just BS. How do you get informaiton on the Belvedere production; what is the production screen?

Thanks

 

Production screen is ther hourly build only veiwable from DCX. over 1000 now for three shifts today.

 

I believe MeAlso works at one of the DCX Assembly plants and can see what was built at any plant that day.

Someone is blowing smoke up your butt about the plant shutting down. The plant will never shutdown unless there's a serious problem with the robots or something like that. They're just trying to buy time because your car isn't built yet. So many times dealers have said the plant is shutting down for this reason or that. Nobody that I know of has complained one bit about a fuel problem. Why all of a sudden would they just stop production? Just doesn't make any sense.

BIGTSR: I believe all Compasses are made on the 3rd shift unless make them on all shifts now. Some Calibers are made on the 3rd shift as well. Mine was according to the sticker on the inside of the door.

 

Show this to your dealer and tel him he is full of bs
From Automotive News:

Reuters | 2:00 pm, September 13, 2006
DETROIT -- The Chrysler group has ramped up to full production at the plant that makes the Dodge Caliber, overcoming a glitch that had limited sales of its hottest-selling new car, the company's manufacturing chief said today.

Chrysler's Belvidere, Ill., assembly plant, which makes the Caliber and the Jeep Compass, had been hit by a software problem that caused the facility's robots to crash into each other, slowing production of the Caliber in its first months on the market.

At the Reuters Autos Summit, Chrysler group Executive Vice President Frank Ewasyshyn said the plant had reached its full potential output on the previous shift today for the first time.

"We hit full rate, full volume on the third shift wide open," Ewasyshyn said. "(It's) the first time we've hit the whole thing wide open, so we're happy with that."

Chrysler has sold almost 60,000 Calibers since the launch of the hatchback in February, making it one of the best-selling American-made small cars this year.

The car, which starts at just under $14,000, has been marketed as a more stylish and feature-laden alternative to the fuel-efficient "econo-box" small cars that U.S. consumers turned away from in the 1980s.

Dealers have reported difficulty getting enough inventory of Caliber.

Ewasyshyn said the problem at Belvidere had been in programming the software to run the industrial robots supplied by Swiss engineering firm ABB.

Chrysler invested $419 million last year to retool the Belvidere plant, which had produced the now-scrapped Dodge Neon, to make it into a flexible manufacturing facility.

Flexible assembly plants, which can build more than one model at a time, automate key jobs with robots in a bid to better match output to market demand and reduce vehicle inventories.

"What really happened was that we took on a very aggressive launch curve," Ewasyshyn said. "We took on a brand-new technology, and we did run into an issue with the way some software was applied."

The plant's robots, he said, had not been programmed to account for their relative positions on the line.

"The end result was some fairly interesting collisions," he said. "They got to know each other in a way that we didn't want them to know each other, let me put it that way."

Ewasyshyn said Chrysler would monitor future programming decisions far more carefully to avoid a repeat of the problem.

"I don't think it's so much a new kind of execution risk, but it's definitely going to require a new kind of programmer," he said. "It's going to require a whole new level of discipline in the way things are executed."

The Belvidere plant is capable of producing more than 1,500 vehicles per day when running on three, eight-hour shifts as it is currently, he said.

The same assembly plant will also produce the upcoming Jeep Patriot. The Caliber accounts for about 60 percent of current output, but that ratio could shift with demand, Chrysler said.