Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/6/22 11:52:45

If you haven't seen the inside of a modern U.S. auto plant in the last ten years, I heartily endorse making a visit.

I went through the truck plant at the Rouge a couple years ago. One thing that suprised me: to ensure paint match, the bodies are painted with the doors on, then the doors are dismounted and sent down a seperate line to have the internals installed, locks, window regulators and such, and the door line is coordinated with the body line so the doors come out just in time to be reattached to the body they came from.

Boggles my mind how Packard ever got the paint to match prior to 55 as, apparently, the bodies were painted at Conner and the front clips were fabricated and painted at EGB. I have never seen a perfect paint match from a body shop. Even if the paint looks OK at first, it doesn't after a couple years of weathering.

After looking at the entire proposition, it looks like moving to Willow Run was a non-starter.

The best move would have been to keep final assembly at EGB. Maybe move front clip fab and paint to Conner so the front clip and body go through the paint booth together, then they are shipped together to EGB, sent down coordinated lines so the trimmed body and it's front clip arrive at final assembly in the right sequence.

That would have saved much of the $12M cost of moving final assembly to Conner and avoided the logjam that developed there. Then they could have taken the money saved by not moving and bought Conner outright.

Having a seperate body plant is not a deal killer. AMC was still shipping bodies from Milwaukee to final assembly in Kenosha in the 70s. By Walter Grant's numbers, buying Conner, so Briggs wasn't draining Packard's pocket anymore, and running as they had, would save $8M/yr.