Today we spoke with Krzysztof Jarzyna, general manager of the Central European subsidiary, to find out more about this company which, despite being 2,400 kilometers away from Albal, beats at the same pace as the part of I. Alegre that overlooks the Mediterranean.

Question: After 7 years of operation, where does the Wroclaw plant stand in terms of capacity and production rate?

Answer: Still too low. Our plant capacity occupation rate is around 50%. Obviously, we require more orders. But what is positive we have really good perspectives due to client portfolio diversification and new upcoming projects. From one main customer (FORD) in 2017 plant start to support clients like: VW, SKODA, AD Plastik (FCA), UFI (Tesla) and YangFeng. It’s perfect example of really good cooperation between HQ team and plant team members showing how to bring success to reality. 

Q.: What do you consider to be the most outstanding achievements of your production site in this time?

A.: For me answer is only one. People. Created team spirt and fully target oriented team acting as one. You can feel it every day coming to the plant …positive engagement is in the air 😊

Q.: And the challenge(s) that have caused you the most problems?

A.: Biggest challenge came COVID production restart when semiconductors supply chain broken and become huge system bottleneck. It was really difficult time. Decisions – even this most difficult ones - are always made base of most well known facts. We have to say clear: we were managing organization being completely blind. Clients were forecasting huge volumes for even next days and canceling it almost the same day orders arrived. It was tough to predict and balance between client and costs. We have incorporated many data sources to gain most accurate information’s on time, increase strongly our flexibility level, get orders from outside automotive industry (LG) and take some risks to minimize losses. In the end it made us stronger … as humans and team. 

Q.: You started with a type of parts similar to those manufactured in Spain, but now your plant produces other types of auto parts and you have started to work for sectors other than the automotive sector. Can you summarise your current activity?

A.: Our core stays unchanged. But to grow we need to be open minded and learn quickly how to adapt. At this moment we have gas injection technology, 2K with hepa car filters, spoiler assembly plus past experience in cloth/material over injection and big aluminum over injection parts for white goods (AGD) production. Scope of competency is high and it’s growing. We need to always remind that’s whole Alegre Team success – from Spain and Poland.

Q.: This plant initially draws on the know-how of the Albal plant, but now it has its own identity. What unique features has it developed over time, how are the two factories still similar and how do they differ from each other now?

A.: I always try to avoid comparing the organizations. Both sides has own strong points and definitely Industrias Alegre is strong because of great team spirit and people engagement. I’m thinking about both plants. What make us different in Polish plant at least 3 nations are working together: Polish, Ukraine and Philippines at this moment. It’s also new for us and still we are learning how to manage multicultural environment and eliminate problems related.

Q.: Apart from the many challenges that the automotive world presents throughout Europe, what other specific challenges does the polish plant face at the moment?

A.: The biggest challenge in Poland and especially our regions are people. Unemployment is lower than 1% which obviously is creating big challenge for us. From technical side new coming projects are more complicated. As organization we are going with the trend of automatization and Industry 4.0. But as always is such situation when new technologies are being developed problems appear. When we look from commercial side – we can say we are growing which is really good information. But with grow a lot of new workload is coming. We need to remember each clients has own requirements, documentation and standards to fill. Each of the are require audit at least one time per year, use always different system. What was (but probably shouldn’t) big surprise for us is fact VW/SKODA members prefers to use only German language. There are of course many obstacles more. But we are hire and we will manage them as one Team. This I’m really sure.