“We’ve made great progress,” Jeff Liu, who leads Fuyao’s Moraine plant, said in an interview Monday at the company’s Taste of the World restaurant.
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The report’s numbers include the operations of Fuyao Glass America’s Moraine plant, Fuyao Illinois Inc., a glass-making operation in Mount Zion, Ill., and Fuyao Asset Management, LLC.
The Moraine plant has 2,300 employees today. It’s the company’s goal to add 100 more workers there this year. Hiring has slackened in today’s automotive market, but it has not stopped, Liu said.
“Unfortunately, the automotive market has slowed down,” he said.
Fuyao Glass America makes safety glass for automakers in North America, in what Fuyao says is the largest automotive glass plant on the planet, off West Stroop Road. The plant has a capacity of four million sets of auto OEM (original equipment manufacturer) glass each year, with additional capacity for after-market glass sets.
When Liu took the helm in November 2016, the company was losing money. In its 2016 annual report, Fuyao said its Moraine operation had lost $41 million that year.
In 2017, Fuyao — including its wholly-owned subsidiary in Illinois — recorded operating revenue of $318,996,700 and a net profit of $754,500, “achieving a turnaround from loss to profit,” the report said that year.
“Every year, we’ve spent on capital investment — $30 (million) to $40 million,” Liu said Monday. “To do (plant) renovation, we try to do more with advanced technology.”
The goal is to give Fuyao’s 2,300 Moraine workers a better working environment while meeting customer expectations, he said.
“Renovation, continual improvement and of course meeting requirements from the customers,” said Liu, who worked for General Motors for a decade. “We’ve learned a lot from (Fuyao customers) BMW, from Honda, from Toyota.”
Also in the report was mention of the Fuyao Glass America worker killed on the job in Moraine a year ago.
The report attributes the worker’s death to the “night shift forklift driver’s non-compliance with the working procedures … resulting in his death after being wedged in between the glass and his forklift.”
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Fuyao $7,000 and asked the company to revise “relevant operation instructions” for “the ease of better understanding by the employees, reinforce safety inspections on the relevant procedures and intensify training for employees to guarantee the employees’ compliance with secure working procedures,” the annual report said.
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