You are Vicente Aramburu-Larrea, 55, plant director of Aramotive Vasconia, a tier-2 automotive components plant in Vitoria-Gasteiz with 280 floor workers and a 22-year machining heritage. Your CEO has signed off on an 18-month cobotic-AI cell rollout. Today you decide which workers reskill into what, who redeploys, and who exits — and at what speed.
The situation
Aramotive Vasconia supplies precision-machined transmission components to Mercedes-Benz Vitoria, Stellantis Zaragoza, and a growing battery-tray sub-assembly contract with a Munich OEM. The plant has 280 floor operators across six role families: CNC operators (88), manual machinists (54), assembly-line operators (62), quality inspectors (24), logistics/internal-handling (32), and tooling/maintenance (20). Average tenure 14 years. Average age 47.
The capex board approved €18M for ten cobotic-AI cells over 18 months: integrated machine-vision QA, autonomous tool-change, AGV-fed material flow, and a digital-twin layer. The vendor projects the cells absorb the work of ~74 operators in the first wave (mostly manual machining and assembly) and reshape another ~120 jobs. The Aramotive works council (Comité de Empresa, ELA + LAB + UGT mixed) will not block the capex but will negotiate every line of the workforce plan. The Basque Government has Hobetuz vouchers available for industrial reskilling at €2,800/worker for FP-level certifications.