Packard Forum Index » General

I am sure that if, magically, the Packard worker from either EGB or Conner were transplanted in a modern U.S. auto plant, at least half of what they'd experience would be completely foreign to them. Sure, parts and stuff goes in one door and a new car rolls out another, but the in-between has changed mightily in the past 10-15 years. Most new cars have robots putting them together more than human hands and eyes. While less romantic than the hard and boring labor of old, new cars are put in place in a much more uniform manner. The materials, from zinc coated steel, through aluminum and plastics, to the exotic carbon fibers, are greatly different than sixty years ago. Roof panels and glass are essentially glued in place rather than gasketed and welded. Where there are worker functions, videos and computers are present to check the quality of what's been done. One thing that has remained constant is that manufacturers still expect their products to last about a decade unless special care is taken by the owners. The fact that some Packards are still with us sixty to more than 110 years is tribute to that care more than the quality that was included at their inception.

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. The sights, smells and colors are still exciting. As a size comparison, try the Kentucky Corvette plant and match it up to the Conner plant of 1955-56. Corvettes come off the line in a single 10 hour shift at about 17-20 per hour. Packard averaged about the same, with perhaps 25 at the good times (faster meant more costly corrective fixing would be necessary). Corvettes and Packards combined parts from both inside the plant and external sources, but in very different ways. A.O. Smith made frames for both Packard and Corvettes at external plants; today's alloy frames are made inside the plant by 33 workers and 90 robots. Packard made its own engines and transmissions internally; most Corvette engines are made in Canada (although some are hand-built at the new factory facility). The Corvette plant has a UAW workforce of about a thousand workers while Conner was four times more to make about the same number of cars. The closest Conner got to robots might have been the body welding jigs Briggs used, or the state-of-the-art Utica engine and transmission lines. Both Corvette and Packards were brands even the factory workers could aspire to, although that was usually a painful stretch. I'd also presume workers at both were proud to say that they worked there.

The guides pointed with pride to the safety feature in those pre OSHA days: the trigger for each press had two buttons a couple feet apart, so the operator had to use both hands to trip the thing, to make sure he didn't have a hand in the press.

I can imagine how proud they were. There is a manufacturing video that has been linked here a couple of times of what I think might be a 30's GM plant. It might be postwar but at any rate there is a row of giant machines performing some operation. Those machines are all sliding in and out to do whatever their task. Standing what appears to be inches away and between them is an operator. The machine does something & slides out. The operator steps in and places a part and the machine moves in again. From what I could see the operation seemed to be automatic. Didn't see anything happening that commanded the operation or that would prevent the machine from doing it's operation if the guys hand was still there. Also didn't see anything preventing that operator from being in the wrong spot when the machine moved. Talk about nerves of steel.

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.

The operator steps in and places a part and the machine moves in again. From what I could see the operation seemed to be automatic.

Cycling the machine regardless whether the operator has the piece placed properly or not could be wasteful. The operator is probably tripping the machine with a foot pedal. Foot pedals were a favorite of Frank Gilbreth, as the foot pedal kept the operators hands free so the time spent moving hands from placing the part to tripping the machine was reduced. Those pedals are gone now, as it was too easy for the operator to trip the machine before he got his hands out of the way.

Talk about nerves of steel.


The kings of nerves of steel in my book are railroad workers. Before the air brake was developed, brakemen had to run along the tops of the cars to operate the individual brake wheels on the cars, with the train in motion, in the dark, with the tops of the cars slick with rain, snow or ice.

Before the knuckle coupler was developed, trainmen had to stand between the cars as they were pushed together, and guide the link from one car into the pocket of the other car, while dropping a pin in place to hold the cars together. It was said you could tell how long a man had been doing this by the number of fingers he had lost.

At both Corvette and BMW's South Carolina plants, any operation where a person has to place or position a part for another stamping or welding operation, there's a lucite set of doors that automatically open for the part to be placed in the jig, then the human steps back out, the doors close, and the operation takes place. No activity can take place while the doors are open and a person's eyes, fingers or other parts are at risk. The stepping forward, doors opening and closing, and stepping back to get another part may seem time wasteful, but, as they say, "Nobody gets hurt" and that saves money. At BMW, workers rotate to different job functions four times a day to cut down on repetitive motion injuries and boredom. I am not sure if that happens at Corvette.

File photos at both EGB and the St. Louis Corvette plant in the fifties seems to show a contrast in worker safety. At Packard, workers in the paint shop seem to be using suits, goggles and respirators. There are similar Corvette workers who are content holding just a paint gun. In the fiberglass finishing areas, they do have masks and respirators, though. I wonder how many of those men lived to see retirement without having a serious lung diagnosis, no matter the company they worked for?

Its a mystery to me and many others (but does not seem to be hit on much) as to WHY Packard didn't assume lease/ownership/control of the Briggs/Conner plant and just continue the status quo of the building of Packard bodies for 1955 in the same manner that Briggs did for the previous years bodies. Everything was in place for the previous manufacture of bodies by Briggs, the only thing needed was Packard to update the current assembly line for bodies to the '55 models, and continue business as it stood. If Conner had excess capacity it could have been used for other stampings and assembly. Nance was handed some very poor advice and surrounded himself with people like Ray Powers who made very bad recommendations.... As a company starting to be fraught with high cash outlays, it certainly didn't have the funds to do much, and yet it foolishly extended itself by moving all production to Conner Ave and thereby creating quality and production problems that would not have happened if it just continued business as it was. It could have leased Conner from Chrysler, continued with same assembly lines for the Clipper and Packard bodies in the same manner as Briggs when they were making the bodies, continued to trim the cars out at East Grand and saved a lot of woe that really cost the company its life. Nance wanted to bring Packard body manufacture back to Packard and it was a good thought, his timing was just all wrong. The argument that a one story plant was more efficient is all well and good and makes a lot of sense, but Packard was on the fence for survival in 1955.... by extending 29 million for start up costs over at Conner it really put itself in great jeopardy.....from which it never recovered. The losses at Studebaker drug it down even lower......till it was so weak as a company with collapsing sales that no one in their right mind would loan them money for the new models...... All these 'studies' of costs efficiencies that were handed to Nance......some of them were obviously just plain flawed. When a business is on the line and doing poorly these major changes instill a risk that is very dangerous........if just one of these 'studies' are flawed or incorrect it can cause the whole stack of cards to fall......which is exactly what happened in Packard's case.

WHY Packard didn't assume lease/ownership/control of the Briggs/Conner plant and just continue the status quo of the building of Packard bodies for 1955

Packard Treasurer Walter Grant figured that continuing as before with body contruction at Conner and final assembly at EBG would save $8M/yr, while combining final assembly at Conner would save $12M/yr. It looked good on paper...

If Conner had excess capacity it could have been used for other stampings and assembly.

It appears that, not only did Conner not have excess capacity, but it was already undersized as Briggs had been leasing some $178,000sqft at EGB.

people like Ray Powers who made very bad recommendations.

Powers came over from Ford in June 53. He was probably involved in the layout of Wayne Assembly, which opened in 52, so that was the layout he was familiar with, not improvising in an obsolete 50 year old facility like EGB.

I wonder when it occured to someone to take the doors off a car before sending it down the line for interior installation, as is done now at the Rouge F-150 plant? As the pic shows, the doors restrict access to the interior. And the doors hanging open as the car moves down the line would seem to invite scratches and dings. I have seen pix of the Kaiser line, and they were all going down the line with the doors open too.

Attach file:

---

  (74.56 KB)

While we're discussing Conner, here's a pic I came across that isn't in the web site's photo files.

Attach file:

---

  (30.96 KB)

I am looking forward to any of the old Detroiters to describe the surrounding buildings to the new picture of the Conner Street (not Avenue?) plant.

I believe it was one of the large Japanese companies which came up with the doors off practice for ergonomic and damage reasons almost twenty years ago. Now virtually all the world's big companies do it that way.

The mid-rise building in the upper, right-hand corner was a Michigan Bell Telephone exchange building - it is on the east side of Connor and south of Warren Avenue. That building has been drastically altered and they cut off all the upper floors and now only the first floor remains.

North of the MBT building was the Parkside Homes government housing project and north of that was Chandler Park.

Due west across Connor from the MBT became a neighborhood shopping center with a Sam's Department store, but that was built in the late 1950's IIRC. The shopping center still stand , but now with a lot of mom & pop tenants. It is the bright white roofed building in the AFTER photo below.

I was a little too young to remember the Connor Avenue/Street Plant. But I seem to recall that after Packard moved out it became a discount warehouse and my mom bought a bed and mattress for my bed there - was a long time ago.

I have attached a Google Earth aerial for comparison.

Attach file:

---

  (29.00 KB)


  (171.82 KB)