Dragos Grigore, General Manager Magna Exteriors Craiova: “We aim for operational excellence and portfolio diversification”

“The lockdown period in March-April was used by Magna Exteriors Craiova to quickly adapt to the pandemic reality, by implementing the corporate standard Smart Start Playbook, a set of measures dedicated to a “safe restart” of the factory, to offer employees the confidence that they are operating in a safe work environment, at the same time giving the customer the confidence that the delivery ability of our factory is not affected,” Dragos Grigore, General Manager at Magna Exteriors Craiova told Automotive Today.

“We can see a pretty good recovery on the car market after the lockdown period in March-April. Step by step, month after month, a new milestone was reached on the road to recovering the volumes. The recovery is not complete, you can see differences between markets, some with a rapid recovery, others still struggling to recover, but the trend is positive, and we believe that it will continue as part of our adaptation to the ‘new normal’. (…) We currently have several directions of action, some oriented towards operational excellence, others towards portfolio diversification.”

How have you managed 2020 so far in the context of a decrease in demand and production on the Romanian car market?

Indeed, 2020 is a challenging year, putting new obstacles in front of us, while bringing us new opportunities to develop the concept of telework or the transition to online and virtual reality. The lockdown period in March-April was used by Magna Exteriors Craiova to quickly adapt to the pandemic reality, by implementing the corporate standard Smart Start Playbook, a set of measures dedicated to a “safe restart” of the factory, to offer employees the confidence that they are operating in a safe work environment, at the same time giving the customer the confidence that the delivery ability of our factory is not affected. Later, based on customer requirements, production recovered very well and quickly, so that in July we were already back to nominal capacity.

How would you describe the company’s evolution in these quarters dominated by uncertainty amid the pandemic?

The main direction was to adapt to the new reality, to learn how to carry out our activity in the “new normal”. The development of new applications and software tools helped us to compensate for the lack of communication and direct meetings, also substantiating the telework activity. At the same time, we had to be creative and think unconventional about working tools in the area of ​​human resources. At the moment, many of the activities take place online, from monthly meetings with employees to team-building activities, and the next milestone is training conducted through virtual reality. As social responsibility is one of Magna’s core values, I would like to mention here the support we provided to the community at the beginning of the pandemic, producing and delivering 17,000 visors to Romanian hospitals, as well as the fact that Magna made a donation to the “Give Life” NGO, which built a modular hospital for Covid-19 patients.

What are the company’s expectations regarding the evolution of the car industry in 2021?

Globally, we can see a pretty good recovery on the car market after the lockdown period in March-April. Step by step, month after month, a new milestone was reached on the road to recovering the volumes. The recovery is not complete, you can see differences between markets, some with a rapid recovery, others still struggling to recover, but the trend is positive, and we believe that it will continue as part of our adaptation to the “new normal”.

What are the challenges you are currently facing? Did you have to resort to cost and staff reductions?

I would say that the main challenge at the moment is to stay healthy in the middle of this second wave of the pandemic. There are additional protection measures already applied, we have established new ways of reaction, in order to be able to face any situation. On the other hand, it was not necessary to resort to cost and / or staff reductions; during the total quarantine period and immediately after that we resorted to technical unemployment, later, once the production was relaunched, we returned to the normal situation.

Magna Exteriors, a wholly-owned operating unit of Magna International, is a global supplier of exterior products and systems.

Capabilities include design and engineering, styling, tooling, manufacturing, assembly and sequencing, testing, continuous improvement, consumer and market research, benchmarking, and electrical/electronic system integration, among others.

They offer a wide array of products including bumper fascia systems; exterior trim; modular systems; class A body panels; and structural components for automotive, commercial truck, consumer, and industrial markets.