Orion Bus Industries, Driving ambition

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Orion Bus Industries, as part of DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America, boasts a product line that is the widest in the bus industry, all customized to customers’ specifications. Linda Seid Frembes reports

Orion’s primary goals are to satisfy the growing demand for urban and suburban mobility, while protecting the environment by improving the efficiency of their transit products.

“Historically, buses have been challenged as being seen as a contributor to pollution, but the facts are much different,” says Patrick Scully, chief commercial officer at Orion, who is responsible for sales, service, parts, and warranty for the company’s products. “We’ve always been leaders in our field, especially in the technology arena. We’ve eliminated the era of the ‘stinky bus’ by concentrating on clean, efficient, and environmentally-friendly transit buses.”

The very first Orion bus was developed in 1976 and delivered in January 1977. One of the milestones of public transportation was the introduction of the low floor Orion II bus in 1983. Since day one, the company has manufactured a low volume product line that is customized to their customer.

Orion buses carry on many years of tradition and efficiently combined with modern engineering. Today, Orion is one of the most trusted names in public transit with buses in service in more than 230 North American cities including New York City, Toronto, Washington D.C., Atlanta. and Sacramento. “Orion grew from a small local company based in Ontario in 1975 until it was incorporated into the DaimlerChrysler family in 2000,” says Tony Domabyl, chief operating officer at Orion.

Under the current DaimlerChrysler structure, there are two manufacturing plants in North America, one located in Mississauga, Ontario (just outside of Toronto) with 350 employees and the other in Oriskany, NY, with 650 employees. Production of all Orion V and VII buses begins at the Mississauga factory where the integrated chassis/body structure for each bus is assembled. The shell is then shipped to the Oriskany plant where seating, engines, transmissions, axles, electrical, heating and air conditioning systems, and other final finish components are installed. Final finish and testing of all buses is completed in Oriskany prior to delivery to the customer.

Unlike many industries, the buy cycle for transit buses is long. As a result, Orion does not keep stock units in inventory. “The process from order to delivery is one to two years since the planning cycles for the cities is five years and longer. Because it is such a long process, we must have significant interaction with the city transit staff throughout the entire process,” explains Scully.

Scully also relies on a team of field sales, field service, and parts staff located throughout the country to keep Orion customers up and running. The company uses purely direct sales methods and does not rely on sales agencies to solicit departments of transit. The sales cycle is either a bid process based on purely low price or an RFP process where each company is evaluated and scored on several factors. Once the process is completed and the contract is awarded to Orion, the specification is taken in-house and refined. The specification documents can range from thirty pages to hundreds of pages. These documents record minute details down to specifying the size, type, and brand of nuts and bolts.

From there, the project is put on the master production schedule. Because it is a concurrent process between sales, operations, and engineering, each team is involved from the very beginning. “We try to base the specification on common modules. The sales team knows the standard specifications and what our customization abilities are,” says Domabyl.

The 40-foot bus is a typical module, although there is a rise in demand of smaller models that can get into the suburbs. “There are roughly 3,000 parts from two hundred major preferred suppliers and several hundred other alternate-tier suppliers,” says Domabyl. “The supply management strategy is to have several tiers of suppliers so that there is never a shortage of supply or options. Orion uses a traditional MRP system for the bulk of parts while high dollar parts utilize a pull system from the supplier.”

Operating within the DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America organization gives Orion several advantages. In 2004, the Oriskany plant implemented the DaimlerChrysler Production System. Under that umbrella is a multi-pronged strategy for efficiency and growth, including tools such as Kaizen, 5S, and visual factory strategies.

In Oriskany, the company also converted the manufacturing assembly into 23 workstations set up in a horseshoe. The bus moves through the twenty-three stations every 110 minutes, with four line-moves a day. The goal is to increase the visual linkage between subassembly and final assembly, with the overall objective to minimize work in process and parts on the floor.

Another major initiative under the DaimlerChrysler Production System is the Order Center Process. “This cross-functional team looks at the processing of orders from bid to delivery. A daily roundtable meeting helps us manage milestones during each order,” says Domabyl. “The process starts once the order is won.”

As for the future in this industry, Scully replies, “Change doesn’t come quickly to our industry; however, the typical bus is evolving. We’re finding that the cities want a different look to attract more riders and we’ll be right there along side of them designing that transit bus of the future.”

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