Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/6/23 18:15:42

Finally figured it out.

What could Packard have done, that wouldn't cost a lot, like buying Willow Run, but still give some of the advantages of a modern single story plant in terms of material handling, workflow and overhead clearance?

Not only was EGB an old style multi-story plant, it was not even rectangular, but followed the even older model of having many narrow wings to maximize the amount of natural light.

Those narrow wings provide the opportunity: roof over all the courtyards between the wings of buildings 31-38, at the same level as the roof of the existing wings. Once the roofs are in, knock out the first floor walls of the wings and remove the windows from the 2nd and 3rd floors, turning them into mezzanines.

While we're at it, I doubt Packard really needed building 39 as it was built for the Merlin program, so knock it down and rebuild as high bay space.

This would only add about net 100,000sqft of workspace for a total of about 370,000sqft on the ground floor, but the name of the game is space free and clear, no pillars, no narrow wings and free movement of workflow and forklifts carrying parts, meanwhile work in the upper floors of 31-38, the subassembly work that was done there before the remod, continues undisturbed.

The new high bay areas would have plenty of height. If Packard wanted to put in paint booths and ovens, so they would only have to sub out stamping, they could. If they wanted to bring stamping in house, they would have room for the largest presses they could need.

Speaking of presses, I think I figured out why Packard outsourced all the bodybuilding to Briggs when they did.

Packard's 1944 annual report has diagrams showing how the wartime work was distributed around the plant, and how work was distributed pre-war. The pre-war diagram shows the "stamping division" in buildings 41-50, with steel storage in 90, which was between the railroad tracks and the 41-50 complex. 41-50 are only one story tall. When GM came out with it's one piece "turret top" roof stampings in 35, the move to larger stampings, and the larger presses needed to make them was on. Even if Packard had wanted to invest in new, larger, presses, the new presses would not have fit in the buildings they had. Confronted with the need to: buy new presses, build new buildings to hold the presses, buy land somewhere on which to build the new buildings (couldn't build where the old stamping division was because that would stop production for a year) Packard did it's usual thing and punted.

I have heard two things about the Packard/Briggs deal

-Packard didn't keep records of what equipment it moved to Briggs

-the price Briggs charged the first couple years was very attractive, but then the price soared.

My hunch is Packard bartered the equipment for a discount on the bodies. After the first couple years, the barter agreement ran out and Briggs started charging full price.

And to think I was right over in Dearborn, starting in September of 53. Nance could have driven over and asked me what to do....but my language skills were not well developed at that time, so he might not have understood what I was driving at.