TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Even with high gasoline prices, U.S. consumers still want high-quality vehicles that haul a lot of people and perform well, and that is forcing automakers to make radical changes in the way they manufacture vehicles, panelists at an industry conference said Monday.

Speaking at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars, executives for Toyota, Ford and Chrysler said they are rapidly changing their operations to keep up with the market while trying to improve quality at the same time.

“Everything’s getting tighter. Everything’s getting more difficult, and we’ve got to learn to start to take things apart –– take them apart put them back together again –– find a new way to do it,” said Frank Ewasyshyn, executive vice president of manufacturing for Chrysler.

Customers now have such high expectations that automakers are under simultaneous pressures to cut costs, improve productivity, raise quality and speed new models to the market more quickly, panelists said.

“The market is telling us to change and to change right now,” said Bennie Fowler, Ford’s group vice president for global quality.

All three executives said their companies are responding by fitting their plants to build multiple models, listening to employees who make quality improvement suggestions, and trying to save money by using less energy. All have cut factory production of pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles while trying to increase small-car output.

At Ford, the company set a target of best-in-class initial quality for the its new European small cars that are coming to North America in 2010, a difficult task as it now tries to roll out the new models faster, Fowler said.

But he said the company will do it with discipline and manufacturing processes that are standardized throughout the world.

Toyota hasn’t been immune to the changing U.S. market, in which sales have dropped 10.5 percent in the first seven months of the year. Sales of light trucks are off nearly 19 percent, while car sales are down about 1 percent.

Toyota has announced plans to suspend pickup and large SUV production until November at two U.S. plants and convert its new factory in Blue Springs, Miss., to make the Prius gas-electric hybrid in 2010 instead of the Highlander crossover SUV. Highlander production will be moved to Princeton, Ind., while Tundra pickup production will be consolidated to one plant in Texas, said Steve St. Angelo, senior vice president of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing in North America.

“We believe our flexibility is good; however, we are working hard, we are working very hard to improve it,” St. Angelo said.

The changes will allow Toyota to use its factory capacity better and adjust to the changing market, he said.

At Chrysler, the company already has made some of its plants flexible enough to build up to three different models, and robotics have reduced costs, Ewasyshyn said.

Chrysler has improved to the point that it tied with Toyota for the lead in the latest Harbour Report, a closely watched study of manufacturing productivity. Now it is focusing the same energy on improving quality, Ewasyshyn said.