Groupe PSA restarts manufacturing at facilities in a ‘progressive’ way

Groupe PSA – which owns automotive brands such as Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel and Vauxhall – says it is restarting manufacturing at facilities in a “progressive and secured” way.

The company says it has reinforced health measures, shared with the social partners, and deployed before any restart of activity with voluntary employees.

It says it will start an audit campaign to guarantee their “perfect implementation in 100 percent of the group’s industrial, commercial, tertiary and research and development sites”.

Groupe PSA says it is embarking on a “gradual and secured resumption of manufacturing activity, driven by commercial activity”.

Yann Vincent, executive vice president manufacturing of Groupe PSA, says: “Protecting our employees and protecting our company remain the two intangible principles for the conduct of our operations.

“Our enhanced measures protocol offers a high level of protection to our employees and is the first criterion for restarting our production sites.

“As industrial activity is driven by commercial activity, which is our second criterion, we are gradually and securely relaunching our industrial apparatus to manufacture the cars expected by our customers. These two criteria will guide our decisions for the coming weeks and months.”

Since the start of the Covid-19 health crisis, Groupe PSA’s priority has been to protect the health of its employees and ensure the sustainability of the business.

During the shutdown period of its production activities, Groupe PSA deployed a protocol of reinforced sanitary measures (1), adapted to the context of each industrial, commercial, administrative and R&D site.

Built with the health services, this protocol has been widely shared with representative trade union organizations and has been subject to systematic audits.

In addition, people called “Protocol Referents” will be responsible for verifying the application of barrier measures and gestures on site, and implementing corrective actions if necessary.

The gradual and secured restart of production will take place in the coming weeks with a first wave of partial reopening of industrial activity between May 4 and 11 (from May 11 in France), taking into account the context commercial (deconfinement, reopening of dealers and commercial situation of each model).