The company last year announced plans to acquire the 782,000-square-foot facility, investing $162 million to build a global hub for assembling the new nine-speed transmission used in the Jeep Cherokee, Chrysler 200 and other models.
Up to 850 new jobs will be required to bring the plant up to full capacity, at which point it will ship approximately 800,000 transmissions to vehicle assembly facilities in the US and abroad.
“With the startup of [Tipton Transmission Plant], we are enhancing the status of this region as the largest transmission installation in the world,” said CEO Sergio Marchionne. “Just recently, we reached the landmark numbers of 17 million four-speed transmissions and three million six-speed transmissions built in Kokomo.”
The Tipton plant is part of Chrysler’s transmission production network in north-central Indiana, where 2,600 people have been hired and more than $1.6 billion invested since 2009. The company employes more than 7,000 people at its five plants in the region.
Parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently announced an ambitious five-year plan, aiming to double Jeep sales by 2018. All Jeep models are currently produced in the US, however manufacturing operations will eventually expand globally to meet the distribution goals.
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