ABB to Run Maintenance at Cooper’s Georgia Plant

ABB, a leading power and automation technology group, said on 23 August, it has signed an agreement with Cooper Tire & Rubber Company to manage maintenance operations at its Albany, Georgia plant.

“This service agreement is one of various strategic initiatives within Cooper Tire to improve manufacturing efficiency, product and customer mix, and market share,” said Scott Jamieson, vice president of manufacturing for Cooper Tire. “By entrusting plant maintenance operations to an established partner such as ABB, we can better focus on our core competence of manufacturing and marketing high-quality tyres at competitive costs.”

Under the terms of the agreement, ABB will assume some 100 maintenance employees and responsibility for all maintenance-related activities and equipment at the plant, and will manage the operations to contractually-agreed targets for plant performance. ABB Full Service agreements are said to typically improve productivity and equipment availability while reducing maintenance costs for customers by up to 20 per cent.

The ABB Full Service agreement covers a five-year period, and is the first agreement of its type for ABB in the North American automotive industry. The new contract complements more than 125 ABB Full Service relationships with customers in the paper, metals, mining, chemicals, oil and gas, and telecommunications industries.