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Kia Georgia CEO Stuart Countess is proud of the Korean auto maker’s work to fix 2.8 million dents caused by a 2023 hailstorm.
“I will stand by any one of those that you couldn’t tell the difference,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean he wants to go through the ordeal again.
Raging through West Point, Ga., the storm hit 13,000 newly minted Kia vehicles, a challenge the executive had never encountered across a 30-year career making cars, the last 18 spent at the Georgia facility 0.that turns out one of five Kia models every 51 seconds.
Luckily, no one was hurt, but the four-month ordeal drained company resources and team energy, causing executives to “think differently.”
“We couldn’t go through that again,” Mr. Countess said during a keynote address at Partnership Gwinnett‘s Movers and Makers Awards Friday.
Last month, Kia decided to look to the skies again, but this time for productive (rather than destructive) energy, adopting a “circus-tent” solution that will pay long-term dividends for the power-hungry plant.
Kia partnered with Vehicle Protection Solutions and Georgia Power to install a canopy that will shield cars awaiting shipment from future damage, adding solar panels on top. Unveiled on April 24, the system covers 3.2 million square feet and produces 10 megawatts of power.
“By combining large-scale protection with on-site solar generation, Kia Georgia is not only safeguarding its operations but also turning that investment into a source of ongoing value,” said VPS Executive Vice President Wade White said in a news release announcing the project. An additional benefit for the state: The panels were also made in Georgia, at the Qcells facility just up the road in Dalton.
Mr. Countess said the panels would offset energy usage by about 10 percent, joking that he told Georgia Power executives he would give them back some of Kia’s power for the data center boom.
“These are innovative ideas, but you have to have good partners who are bringing these solutions to the table to help you move forward. It has led to another solar expansion that we’re going to do, which is again going to just offset more energy,” Mr. Countess said.
Kia’s collaborative culture, focused on continuous improvement, invites innovation from all quarters, Mr. Countess said, outlining how an 18-year-old employee in the paint shop unlocked $4 million in savings annually by questioning traditional methods of maintenance.
Powered in part by its parent company Hyundai Motor Group, which bought Boston Dynamics, the company is deploying the Spot “robotic dog” to patrol the third floor of the Kia plant’s paint shop, monitoring temperatures and tracking vibrations and supplies.
“Everybody always wants to ask me, ‘Well, is this going to eliminate jobs?’ My answer to that question is, No. What it’s doing is transforming and changing who are the people that we need. It is giving growth and opportunity to other people to learn how to teach, repair and program these robots. That’s skilling up. That’s what we want. That increases people wages. It increases their opportunities.”
Kia has been cautiously looking into artificial intelligence, testing along the edges of its processes. A tech trend perhaps more likely to show up in the near future? Humanoid robots in the warehouse.
Mr. Countess also outlined the company’s broader sustainability moves beyond offering electric vehicles like the EV6 and the EV9, both of which are made in West Point. Kia is part of the Hyundai Group’s RE100 pledges and is looking into ways to move product from the port to the plant via Hyundai’s hydrogen powered trucks, he said.
Addressing more than 250 attendees at the annual awards ceremony, he also recounted how the pandemic stretched the company and built resiliency among its leaders and workforce.
Even then, Kia avoided laying off any of its 3,200 on-site employees, and it uses a “temp-to-perm” system run by a staffing firm to “move with the market” while plugging temporary workers into permanent positions as they become available.
A major key to Kia’s success, particularly amid the current flagging demand for electric vehicles, is that it builds all five models, both EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles, on the same assembly line, enabled by a troupe of robots engaged in stamping, welding, painting and other tasks.
“There are no side lines, no spurs, no parallel lines. We build them in any order that we wish to meet customer demand. Most factories will have a parallel line where they’ll build certain type SUVs on one line, certain cars on one line. We choose not to do that, and we have strategically since the very beginning, planned on doing this. Again, it is about keeping Georgians employed, 24 hours a day, five days a week, and that’s what our goal is.”
Some of those workers, including a father-and-son team, were featured on a massive screen during the New Year’s countdown at Times Square last year, a testament to the value Kia places on its floor workers, Mr. Countess said. Because no cars get made without them, he said, the company has never had a remote-work policy for office staff.
The 2,200-acre site, selected in 2006 with the factory starting production in 2009, site churns out 350,000 vehicles per year, many of them exported to the Middle East, South America and other markets. The Kia Telluride three-row SUV, which in 2027 includes a hybrid model averaging more than 30 miles per gallon, is only made in Georgia.
