Ever been in an auto assembly plant? I was in a GM plant back in the
1980s, but things have changed since then and a lot of robots. A lot of engineering goes into building the plant.
I visited the Ford Mustang plant back in the 60's. At the end of the line, a driver jumped into the car, burned rubber, then slammed on the brakes, squealing to a stop at the 1st inspection point less than 50 feet away. That - I remember.
The Crown Vic plant - the smell of marijuana smoke was quite evident inside the loading dock area where we came & went.
Great video.
You just reminded me that there was a GM plant in Baltimore, assembly plant I think, and I think I went on the tour, but I can't remember anything. Dang. I remember wide yellow lines on the floor that, of course, you couldn't cross or you'd become part of a dashboard, but that's all. I think the plant closed so I can't go again. I must not have seen that much.
Yes, oppened 1935, closed 2005.
Lot more robotics than when I went through plants in late '80's. At Chrysler plant here I was impressed with robots switching between welding car frames followed by wagon frames without skipping a beat. I was working on a resin for auto body parts that would survive baked on coating and painting temperatures. We had been through the Pontiac Fiero plant in Michigan where plastic parts were used and painted individually off line on frames to survive curing temperatures.
One day in 1970 in Detroit. I was a guest in Chrysler's Eldon Avenue axle plant. I was there to see a vendor's just-installed multi station automated transfer line. It took rough-cast differential housings and through 30-35 separate operations, automatically sized. ground, polished, drilled, tapped, dropped in the gears and oil, closed it up and torqued down the dozen or so bolts clamping it together to the specified foot-pounds.
The final station tested the bolt torques and had a large mechanical dis[lay panel showing the outline of the differential with red and green lights at each bolt position. A union member holding a Sears Craftsman torque wench adjusted any bolts that lit up red on the panel and had set off a loud annoying buzzer. His partner then picked up the differential and placed it in the large finished components bin.
After a run of maybe a dozen badly mis-torqued units, the guy with the wrench got fed up. Instead of correcting the bolt torques, he just picked the units up from the test station and dropped them in the finished goods bin saying "f**k it".
At that point, I had fresh insight into why my wife's new Dodge Dart had a whining rear end when going around corners or a sharp curve.
Never buy a car assembled on a Monday or a Friday. Words to live by, from this Detroit girl.
Sure, fifty three years ago you claim to have witnessed a single employee not doing his job correctly. It is a logical fallacy to draw a comprehensive conclusion from a single data point.
Old wives tale.
"In summary, if we can use workplace accidents as indicators of overall concentration levels of workers and consequently manufacturing quality, the data suggest that there is overall little difference between weekdays, with Mondays and Fridays generally being best. How come? It may just turn out that most workers don't get totally wasted on the week-end, but actually relax, and that on Friday, the prospect of relaxing on the week-end makes people happier and thus more motivated to do a good job.
I've known quite a number of auto workers. I stand by my recommendation.
Actually, I haven't bought anything but a Japanese car in decades, so the point might be moot.
It's the stuff of songs : :-)
Same here. Japanese believe in continuous improvement and US in making it cheaper. Last US car I had was a Ford made in Mexico whose engine went in 11 months and I had to sue Ford to get it fixed properly.
I'm curious-- are you really a humorless concrete-thinking nitwit-- or as we hope is the case, you simply adopted that persona for your usenet identity?
I agree. Reality, you should never buy a car assembled in Detroit no matter what day of the week. Had plenty of them, no more though. Had enough of their junk. Korean and Japanese, even if made here in the US have better quality and reliability.
Does Detroit still make cars ? Dunno. John T.
Or a car made any day of the week in Lordstown. That place is a jinx. Lordstown Motors filed for Chapter 11 last month. With all the incentives it must be hard to go broke making EVs.
Back in the '90s my brother came through town with his RV towing a Toyota Tercel. For the backstory, he had been a Marine Airedale in the Pacific. "I never thought I'd buy a Jap car but..."
I'd been brought up not to buy Japanese but I surrendered in the '80s. Everything from model plane engines to bicycles were Japanese, even high end fishing rods.
Toyota plant and I think, many years ago, the Oakville Ford plant but I can't remember that one for sure. (Also Fiamond Aircraft in London and BRP engine plant in Austrua) The automation involved is unbelievable, and the BRP (Rotax) plant recycled EVERYTHING - with "dry machining" using no coolant so the chips were clean for remelt. The plant was very heavily solar powered as well - power consumption from the grid was very low.
GM retooled the Detroit-Hamtramck plant to make EVs. I think it's still in operation.
Robots don't get hang-overs or get in a rush to leave for the weekend. If the "babysitter" has a hangover it doesn't affect the operation of the robot. At the BRP plant all the torquing was done by automated and monitored torque wrenches and the engine could not leave the assembly station untill all torques had registered in spec. I was VERY impressed by their QC.
Far from the reports I got from my brother-in-law when he worked in the Essex Engine plant and foundry at Ford - where a calibration jig for one or more of the test guages had been broken and totally non-functional for 3 years. I guess the guage was pretty durable and didn't get out of calibration over that time period because there was no mass failure issue with the heads in question - - -
When my brother finished med school and moved to Brooklyn, he bought a new '65 Pontiac Catalina convertible. A beautiful car. Looked like a rocket and should be racing at White Sands. He had loads of trouble with dead batteries for two years until the dealer said the warranty had run out and refused to work on it. After his residency, the army sent him to Viet Nam, and he lent the car to me, After a few months, he decided to buy another car when he got back and he gave the car to me.
Sears fixed the bad battery in 5 minutes, for free. Dirty connection between the starter motor cable and the starter. EVery time I left the lights on and engine stopped, the problem recurred. Maybe a bad choice of materials. Not a Monday or Friday problem.
But I found other problems.
Missing hose to the vacuum advance on the carburetor, so my brother couldn't pull away from a stop without lurching. I had assumed it was his fault. From most povs you couldn't see the places the hose should attach. I don't know if they never installed the hose, or if the dealer removed it. Monday, Friday?
Control wires for fresh air vents in kick panels totally not connected. Vents always closed. Before there was AC, there were big wonderful vents down by one's feet. When I took off the covers, the cables were there but were not hooked to the vent doors. Monday, Friday??
Driver's window not in the channel inside the door. Channel never adjusted. It was straight, so curved window would not fit. There was a screw for adjusting. 5 or 10 turns and its curve matched the window's curve. Monday, Friday??
Driver's window more than an inch from top. Rained in. This was the original convertible top. Monday, Friday??
Finally, steering wheel designed upside down, then mounted upside down. If I turned the wheel 90^ and turned it back at all, the turn-signal turned off. It was supposed to be 270^, and I think it still works that way. It worked wrong because the steering wheel was mounted upside down. But the design problem was that the plastic wheel also had grips molded into it. They were at 2 and 10. When I turned the wheel upside down, they were at 4 and 8. Not the right place for hands, but maybe why the installer mounted the wheel upside down, since it looked better that way. OTOH when I turned it right-side up, the electric contact that rode on a copper ring when the wheel rotated was in the wrong place. I had to drill a hole in the hub 180^ from the original hole. So maybe this was entirely a design problem, not Monday, Friday.
I said I'd never get another car like this, but when my car was destroyed, it was hard to shop for another without a car. I only saw 3 and I bought the '67 version of the same '65 car. The first 7 digits of the serial number were the same! But that car had no problems!!!! Not a Monday, Friday car??
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