COVID-19: Bentley starts phased production ramp up

Bentley Motors has resumed production at the company’s headquarters in Crewe, England, with over 1,700 employees following the 250 comprehensive hygiene and social distancing guidelines implemented to enable a safe return.

Dubbed the ‘Come Back Stronger’ programme, this signals a phased production ramp up following what has been some of the biggest changes to daily working life in the company’s 100-year history due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The redesigned manufacturing facility allows two-metre distance between workers, and one-way movement paths and traffic flows. Even the washrooms across the site have been reconfigured to reduce the number of people being able to use them.

On each line, production will be running at approximately 50 per cent for a number of weeks as the average start time from one manufacturing stage to the next has doubled. In addition, each production cell now spreads over two stages rather than one, ensuring adequate distance between colleagues.

The remaining manufacturing workers, over 500, are anticipated to return by the middle of June based on current assumptions and government guidance. All workers have been kept fully updated with the changes through a home-issued guide, video tutorial and a newly created Employee News app designed to ease any uncertainty that this challenging period prompts.

In relevant office areas and catering facilities where distancing is more challenging, plastic partitions - designed and manufactured by Bentley workers – now offer segregation between colleagues in addition to control measures limiting capacity, staggered times and distanced seating.

Commenting on the production restart, Adrian Hallmark, Chairman and CEO, Bentley Motors, said: “Now is the right time for the business to come back stronger. We have introduced extensive new working measures to protect our colleagues, our families and our customers and we are confident, following the work of so many people, that being at Bentley will be as safe for our colleagues as being anywhere else. “We have a strong order bank, around eight months of customer orders to manufacture, established parts supply routes and patient customers who are looking to receive their extraordinary cars as soon as possible. We will ramp up in a controlled, measured way to ensure we manage this continued demand, and look ahead and in spite of this interruption continue on our journey to lead sustainable luxury mobility in the future.”