Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/6/8 23:47:41

The small window of opportunity becomes obvious, only June to September '53.

The window was even shorter than that, it slammed shut the day the Hydramatic plant in Livonia burned, August 12th. Edgar Kaiser called up GM the next day and asked if they would like to lease part of W-R as they had 1,000,000 sqft free and clear, the space the Air Force C-119 program had occupied.

I wonder if EGB could have been organized in such a way to emulate a single story plant in the interim

Yes, partly. The complex was long enough that a chassis line could be on the ground floor, with the body line on the second floor so when the body is complete, it's dropped through a hole in the floor to mate with the chassis below. iirc at one time EGB was set up that way. The Ford Highland Park plant was set up that way as well.

Getting components and supplies to the upper floors would still be a problem, because the multi-floor design does not lend itself well to the conveyors and fork-lift trucks that were used for material handling post WWII.

Once the J-47 contract was gone, that must have freed up space but was it all at Utica?


Utica as built, was about 780,000 sqft, about the same as Connor. Packard also bought an existing building on Mt Elliott in Detroit to make forgings for the J-47s, some 325,000 sqft. The thing about defense contracts is the products need to be made in secure locations, not integrated with civilian production. When Kaiser was building C-119s, they had to build a wall inside W-R to keep the C-119 area seperate and secure. I doubt the end of the J-47 program freed up any space at EGB.

Christopher touted the duel assembly lines instituted for 200K units; were those still in place, one line could have been converted for complete body assembly and trim, phasing out Connor over a couple of years.

When Nance first started at Packard, he asked about bringing bodybuilding in house. The CFO, Grant, said that obtaining the equipment, probably primarily the presses, and installing it in EGB would only make economic sense with a production rate of 200,000 cars/year, more than double what Packard was selling.

Besides doing the body building at Conner, Briggs was leasing space at EGB to do additional work on the bodies before handing them over to Packard.

Packard was building the front clips, seats, instrument panels and trim and adding them to the bodies before they were dropped on the chassis. This was all going on in the section of the plant south of East Grand.

<i>..assembly operational stability was key to putting highly satisfactory cars into customer hands in the critical early sales season.</i>

Agreed. Nance was a salesman, not a cost accountant or manufacturing engineer. He was swayed by Grant's estimate that continuing with Conner and EGB as they had would save $8M/yr, while adding final assembly at Conner would save $12M/yr. Ray Powers should have gotten on top of the conference room table and jumped up and down saying that the space at Conner was not adequate and the disruption of workflow would create inefficiencies.

There is an Executive at the Gilmore Museum near Kalamazoo. It looks like a survivor, rather than a restoration. The hood doesn't fit, there is a 1/4" gap in the trim by the driver's side headlight, there are huge gaps in the trim at the top of the door windows. And the 56s were supposed to be put together better than the 55s? It's a beautiful car, until you get a close look at it.