Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Tim Cole On 2014/5/18 15:59:44

I live within site of the Rouge plant between the old DTI and the Wabash. Every hour trains pass within site carrying parts into the Rouge and finished vehicles out of the Rouge. The Wabash yard is always running.

At other plants the trains are loaded directly from finishing onto trains. If you are on site the trains are backed into the parking lot so that vehicles are driven directly onto them. It's a remarkable sight to see thousands of vehicles disappear overnight onto trains.

Some of those lots are 100 acres.

The Packard plant was not built as a high volume facility. When the luxury market collapsed they used the empty floor space to build 110's and 120's. However, the plants today are not fabricating as high a percentage as they used to. They are slapping parts together. Heck, there are more parts in the typical radio than an entire Packard dashboard.
If they were fabricating a larger percentage of parts the picture would be a lot different. They would be running plastic pellets upstairs on a conveyor to be injection molded and dumping the parts into a hopper.