The parking lot outside Capital City AutoWorks fills up twice a day now, a visible sign of the second shift the Montgomery auto parts supplier added earlier this year. Plant director Renata Boyce said the change came after months of steady growth in orders for interior trim components supplied to vehicle assembly plants across the region.
"We were running our first shift flat out and still falling behind on delivery schedules," Boyce said. "Adding a second shift wasn't really a choice at that point, it was just what the order book required."
Filling Dozens of New Positions
The expansion has meant hiring dozens of new production associates, along with additional quality control staff and a night-shift supervisor team. Boyce said the company has leaned heavily on partnerships with local workforce development programs to identify candidates, particularly those transitioning from other manufacturing jobs or entering the workforce after training programs at area technical colleges.
"We're not just looking for people who can run a machine," Boyce said. "We want people who understand why the tolerances matter, because a defect in interior trim can shut down an entire assembly line downstream."
Capital City AutoWorks supplies molded trim and interior components to several vehicle assembly operations within a few hours' drive of Montgomery, a supply chain relationship Boyce said requires near-flawless reliability. A missed shipment, she noted, can ripple through a customer's production schedule within hours.
Managing Growth Without Losing Quality
Boyce, who joined the company eight years ago as a quality engineer before working her way into the plant director role, said the hardest part of scaling up production has been maintaining consistency across two shifts with different crews and, in some cases, different supervisors' management styles.
"You can have the best day shift in the world, but if your night shift doesn't hold the same standards, your customer doesn't care which shift made the bad part," she said. "We spent a lot of time this year standardizing our training materials so both shifts are working from the same playbook."
The company has also invested in additional inspection equipment to catch defects earlier in the production process, a move Boyce said has already reduced the number of parts flagged during customer audits.
Montgomery's Role in the Regional Supply Chain
Montgomery's position along major interstate corridors has made it a natural hub for suppliers feeding assembly plants throughout the Southeast, and Boyce said Capital City AutoWorks has benefited from that geography as much as from its own operational improvements. Being within a short drive of multiple customers, she said, allows for faster problem-solving when issues arise on the assembly line.
"If a customer calls with a fit issue, we can have someone on-site within a couple hours instead of flying an engineer in from out of state," Boyce said. "That responsiveness is part of what keeps us competitive against bigger suppliers."
Looking ahead, Boyce said the company is evaluating whether continued demand will justify further expansion of its physical footprint, though she was cautious about committing to specific plans. For now, she said the priority is making sure the newly added second shift performs as reliably as the original crew that built the plant's reputation.
"We didn't get this business by being the cheapest supplier," she said. "We got it by being the one customers can count on, and that doesn't change just because we're bigger now."
