GM working to ease bottlenecks, near 100% production in 2023

From shipping vehicles to supplying parts, General Motors has taken action to minimize the logistical bottlenecks that have constrained shipments to dealerships, and it expects to return to nearly full production this year, officials from Chevrolet and its dealer council said.

GM is working to reduce ongoing supply chain constraints and avoid having unfinished vehicles awaiting parts, Scott Bell, vice president of global Chevrolet, told Automotive News ahead of the make meeting for Chevy and Buick-GMC dealers.

Improving the automaker’s logistics network is another priority, he said.

“They want more of what we have,” Bell said. “That’s their biggest frustration.”

He added: “Our focus is on production and capacity and some of the shipping challenges we’ve had. So we need to work hard to straighten those up and get them more of what we have, and especially with these new products coming, that’s what they’re looking for.”

GM says it has purchased additional capacity on vehicle haulers and contracted resources to deliver shipments to dealerships.

Duncan Aldred, vice president of global Buick-GMC, told Automotive News ahead of the make meeting that he believes the worst of the chip shortage is past.

“But I think you’d probably have to say, ‘We hope so,’ as well,” Aldred said. “Whenever you think you are, another one crops up. So we’ve said before, the only predictable bit of this is the unpredictability, and I think that that will still be the case. But we certainly expect a much lower level of volatility caused by chips.”

Keith McCluskey, chairman of the Chevrolet National Dealer Council, told Automotive News that company leaders said in the make meeting that GM is working to accelerate shipments from plants to stores.

McCluskey, CEO of McCluskey Chevrolet in Cincinnati, said GM executives told dealers last month that the company expects to be nearly back to 100 percent of production capability this year after being hamstrung by supply snags amid the pandemic and microchip shortage, “which would be music to our ears.”

Nearly 500,000 vehicles had been built missing some parts, McCluskey said dealers were told, a figure that has been cut to “about 1,000” as of the end of January.

“Bottom line is, the bad weather, the storm is behind us,” he said. “It’s a very bright future.”