SHANGHAI (Reuters) – General Motors’ joint venture in Shanghai has maintained production amid the city’s lockdown by asking workers to sleep on factory floors and getting passes for trucks to continue deliveries, two people familiar with the matter said.
Such measures equate to a “closed-loop” management process, which China’s financial hub has asked companies to adopt to stay open during a two-stage lockdown to battle its COVID outbreak.
In the bubble-like arrangement, which workers sleep, live and work in isolation from the rest of the world to prevent virus transmission. A similar system was used at the Winter Olympics in Beijing to seal event personnel off from the public.
The facilities, which GM runs as part of a joint venture with Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motor Corp that produces Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac vehicles, are in areas east of Shanghai’s Huangpu river that have been locked down from Monday to Friday.
GM, which said on Monday that its Shanghai JV was producing normally, declined to comment on the arrangements at its factory. A spokesperson said the company and its joint ventures had developed and were executing contingency plans with their suppliers to mitigate uncertainty related to COVID-19.
GM’s ability to keep its Shanghai production lines running contrasts with that of Tesla, which Reuters reported has suspended production for the four-day period. It was unable to secure sufficient provisions for its workers to achieve closed-loop management, one source said.
Apple supplier Foxconn, TCL Corp, and Apple supplier Shenzhen Deren Electronic Co Ltd managed to keep production going in southern China this month with closed-loop management after manufacturing hubs such as Shenzhen and Dongguan were hit by similar lockdown measures.
(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Norihiko Shirouzu, writing by Brenda Goh)