FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne told a crowd at the dedication of the new Tipton, Indiana, plant, it will play a vital role with the company.

Chrysler raised an Indiana plant from the dead to build its new nine-speed transmission that will be used to save fuel in the company’s passenger cars and utility vehicles and future fuel-efficiency targets.

Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said at the company’s official dedication of the Tipton, Indiana, plant, which was basically abandoned five years ago, the facility is will play a vital role in creating prosperity for the both the company and for communities in north central Indiana.

“My confidence is rooted firmly in the knowledge that those of you who work in this area have shown a consistent dedication to delivering products with outstanding quality,” said Marchionne, who also told reporters is looking at ways to expand Jeep production in the U.S. but offered no specifics.

An employee at Chrysler Group’s Tipton Transmission Plant (Ind.) putting a gear train into a case of a nine-speed transmission.

Marchionne noted employees in Tipton and nearby Kokomo, Indiana, have embraced the principles of Fiat’s World Class Manufacturing, which will make the plant globally competitive.

“You are the authors of a major success story, creating a great turnaround and making it possible to create the need for this new plant in Tipton,” Marchionne said.

Getrag Transmission first began construction of the Tipton plant in 2007. Gertrag halted production a year later amid a dispute with Cerberus Capital, which then owned Chrysler. Cerberus walked away from its $7 billion investment in Chrysler few months later when the automaker filed for bankruptcy.

The half-finished Tipton plant stood idle until February 2013 when Chrysler invested $162 million in equipment and other improvements to the property to build new nine-speed transmissions there.

Tipton is now slated to become one of the global hubs for nine-speed production. When it reaches full capacity, it will ship about 800,000 finished transmissions to Toledo, Ohio, for use in the Jeep Cherokee and Sterling Heights, Michigan, for the Chrysler 200 as well as to Fiat plants in Melfi, Italy; Tofus, Turkey; Pernambuco, Brazil; and China. The potential exists to expand production to other international facilities, as needed.

Production of the first nine-speed transmissions began in May 2013 at Chrysler Group’s Indiana Transmission Plant 1 (ITP 1) in nearby Kokomo. The opening of the Tipton facility represents phase two. Three of the company’s plants in Kokomo will produce parts for the new transmissions, which will be assembled at Tipton.

“With the startup of TTP, we are enhancing the status of this region as the largest transmission installation in the world,” Marchionne said. “Just recently, we reached the landmark numbers of 17 million four-speed transmissions and 3 million six-speed transmissions built in Kokomo.”

Both the four-speed and six-speed transmissions are built at the Kokomo Transmission Plant (KTP). Since 1974, KTP has built more than 67 million transmissions. The four-speed milestone was achieved during a 25-year period from 1988 to December 2013. The plant began building the six-speed in 2006 and reached the 3 million mark in April.

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Since June 2009, the Company has invested more than $1.6 billion and hired more than 2,600 people in north central Indiana to produce the next generation transmissions. In total, Chrysler Group employs more than 7,000 people in the five plants in the region, a Chrysler representative said.

“The UAW is pleased that Chrysler Group recognized the value of this highly skilled, represented workforce when it decided to establish an additional transmission manufacturing facility in the region,” said UAW Local 685 President Rich Boruff.

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Marchionne also addressed the graduating class as the University of Indiana-Kokomo.

“We need no magic to change the world. We already have all the power we need. It’s inside us. It’s the power to imagine things in a better way. It is up to you to write the story of your life. Nothing is guaranteed, but the possibilities are indeed endless,” Marchionne said.

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“If there is a piece of advice I can leave with you today: ask yourself, whatever you are pursuing, if there is a higher meaning in it, if you are contributing in any way to something that is much more than your personal interest.”

He added he hoped students found their passion. “Every time you act with courage, every time you act with generosity and with concern for the generations to follow, you send out a ripple of hopefulness.”