Thunder Bay’s Bombardier Plant Experiences Growth!
by Scott A. Sumner
The Bombardier Transportation plant in Thunder Bay has been operating on their current site for 100 years now, with the last 20 of them as Bombardier. Today is a great time for the world-class plant. It was fun to sit down with new plant manager Rene Lalande, Vice President Thunder Bay Bombardier Transportation, responsible for sales in Ontario and western Canada, and learn about the tremendous growth they have experienced in the last few years.
Rene is a native of the Mt Tremblant area in the northwest region of Quebec that he feels is not that far in terms of look and feel from this region here. He has been with Bombardier for 7 years based previously in Montreal and Mexico and now in Thunder Bay. Rene is a mechanical engineer by training and previously worked for Pratt Whitney Canada and several other companies. He moved to Thunder Bay last November.
“ This is the largest plant we have in North America and the third largest in the world as we speak for Bombardier Transportation. The aerospace sites at Bombardier in our other division tend to be larger, for example say in Downsview where we have about 4000 people working there for the Q 400. They also do some fuselage parts for another aircraft we manufacture,” said Rene Lalande. “ In Thunder Bay we have 1300 people working which is very, very, high historically in terms of people and in terms of the scope that we covering. We are currently working on three different contracts. The Rocket subway contract for the city of Toronto is a very impressive
project and we are about 1/3 of the way into the production. We are also doing the Bi Level as a continuous production and will increase the pace of the production at the end of this month to satisfy the needs of our customers. Next summer we are changing that production for a new version. The third vehicle we do is the light rail; the streetcar for the Toronto and that is just starting. We will be delivering the first prototype September 7th of this year and 2 more
prototypes before year-end. Then we will go through a technical validation period of 9 months and start the production.”
It is a very exciting time at Bombardier Thunder Bay with a lot happening. They have had to hire over 600 people over the past 18 months and are still in hiring mode needing about another 100 people to be at the full capacity and production volume that they want for a total workforce of 1400. “ It is a lot of new people, young faces joining our company. In modern days it is a lot of employees. Wartime I think we reached 5000 employees at this location but then mechanization was very limited. Today with our mechanization this is about as much employment as we can expect out of the current footprint of the plant. The shop is used to it’s absolute maximum to
the point where we don’t hold all the incoming material and have an external warehouse where we hold supplies as we don’t have enough room in this plant. “ Said Lalande.
“Our building is 553,000 square feet in size and our acreage is large enough so we could grow further. Before we would take a decision to expand the building though we have to look at the
sustainable market. This business is by nature a lot like the building construction business where you have contracts but don’t have a product you keep forever. We are trying to change that with
the Bi Level. It is a product where we sell the same product and have sold over 1000 of them over 30 years. My vision for the plant is to have two very strong platforms that will carry us through tough times and good times with a strong basis of activity and employment for the plant in the years to come. After that you have the additional volume like the Rocket subway contract which could push us past the limit of the existing foot print.” said Lalande.
Bombardier has other plants similar to Thunder Bay but not the same. One of the local specialties they do is the aluminum shell. The bi-level is aluminum and Thunder Bay is the only plant in North America that does that work. It requires a lot of expertise, not only in terms of the machines, but also with the people. The other site is in Vienna, which does the work for Bombardier in Europe.
“ We have a talented group of people here in Thunder Bay, especially in terms of manufacturing product. The tooling plays a vital role in our business. We have tool designers and makers that
are the cream of the crop with 20 to 30 years experience. We are fortunate to have some employees like that here. Today we are hiring new people as well that bring new talent and skills that are often more in the virtual and electronic world. We work very closely with Lakehead University to hire students and work on R & D from the Faculty of Engineering. We see a lot of connections between our two organizations. We are also very strongly connected with Confederation College to provide us with a lot of the talents we need to check and test our products, what we call methods or industrial engineering. We are using a lot of talent right now. We have jobs for all the welders they have graduating right now at Confederation College. We
decide what the recipe is for the cake we are going to have and these people decide how we are going to make the cake,” smiles Rene.
“ This is a world class plant. When we compare ourselves we compare to the rest of the world, to our competitors and the other 40 plants Bombardier has in the world. We have a Bombardier system measure that is an objective measure of where we stack up in terms of the other plants so that is one way to measure ourselves. We compete with other international firms such as Siemens and also benchmark against them,” noted Lalande. “ We are doing well right now, working on all the mass transit that is happening in Ontario right now. We think we do it well and our customers are happy with what we are doing. We do respect the customer and our jobs are only made possible because we satisfy the needs of our customer. This is very much at the heart of our business.”
Bombardier Thunder Bay has made many investments in the last 2 years in term of tooling and equipment and are now putting together that new line for the light rail vehicle as well as the test track that is required to test the product because they always test each vehicle at Bombardier. They are also investing in the next generation of Bi Level, spending over $20 million. That product should start production in the middle of 2013. When Bombardier finish the current bi-level production they will have made over 1100 units in the last 30 years and certainly hope this new generation version will be as successful in the long term.
“ We may not be at 1300 or 1400 employees here in Thunder Bay for ever as there will be fluctuations. This year and next year will be excellent years for us and after that we have to find additional contracts. The beauty of that is we now have two strong platforms that will prevent us from going flat or to 500 employees. We are healthy, at a peak and want to stay as close as possible to this peak. Comparing ourselves to a construction company right know we are building three skyscrapers at once. Two of them will repeat but one is the subway cars for Toronto that once we finish is over and there may only be a requirements for a few more units.,” said Lalande.
“ I love Thunder Bay but I ‘ll be honest, I spend the vast majority of my time working. I come to work at 7am and leave at 7or 8pm each day. I do love my job and what I am doing and think it is
important to deliver these products well to the customer. We have challenges as you could imagine. Not all these projects are easy to make but I feel I owe it to my people to work these hours and solve problems. It is a little bit more than just a job,” notes Lalande. “ I do like the outdoors and absence of traffic in Thunder Bay compared to Montreal and Toronto. There are all the services that you need so it is a very good balance between nature and freedom. Services like restaurants and boutiques provide everything you need to enjoy yourself except time. The sun is up until 10 pm in the evening which is good for a guy like me who comes home late.”
Bombardier Thunder Bay is undergoing a lot of growth which is very nice but also full of challenges at the same time noted Rene Lalande. “There are a lot of people here not used to introducing 600 people into our culture and training them on how we do things, never mind
their specific job. Our growth is faster that we thought so we have imported some managers from the outside including Austria, Mexico, France, Quebec and from here in Thunder Bay. We are all working together to make this plant grow and are trying to make this Thunder Bay plant succeed.” smiles Rene Lalande.
