It’s a few million square feet. More than sixty football fields. And even on this holiday weekend, it’s not silent. In one corner, a group of men congregate around a folded-up seating assembly. Elsewhere, a tractor-trailer backs up to a dock and a green light flashes on as sensors click and an unattended door rolls up. Electric carts and small tractors whiz by me during my long walk through the darkened, cavernous interior spaces. A persistent, high-pitched whine emits from a timeclock. A poster details the instrument panel changes in a 2011 model.
In a society which has largely forgotten the divine and chosen to worship commerce, production, and marketing, this is a cathedral; still, I’m walking quickly without a genuflection to the rows of engine-transmission assemblies suspended above me, because I need to rush home and observe the same rituals. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine closet.
I have a day job now. Normally, I don’t work a day job, but my endless appetite for music, travel, women, and vintage Gibsons has exceeded the constraints of my modest independent means. Everybody asks me what I do there. I never give the same answer. I said, on Facebook, that I put the left rear wheel on a small CUV for a living. I received four messages from friends wondering if there was any room on the line. Times are hard.
I think of what I do as facilitating production. A modern automobile has thousands of components. Very few of them are made on site. The rest come on trucks which back up to any one of our hundreds of docks. They roll out parts in RFID-marked bundles. At some plants, an army of silent robots takes the parts to their places on the line, but my plant is old and so we do it with men and women driving electric tractors. Sometimes I see a once-gorgeous woman flying towards me, in command of enough parts to stop the line for precious minutes, at full speed, her hair blown back, and I smile.
The original automotive assembly plant, Ford’s River Rouge, took steel and coal in one end and spat cars out the other. Those are the old days. We are, truly, merely an assembly plant. We assemble.
I assemble, as well. My mother bought my son a “Cozy Coupe Cart”. This is a Cozy Coupe Cart. I don’t know what the hell it is used for. Perhaps to train children in shopping dynamics. Perhaps my mother bought the Cart because she was too untrained in shopping dynamics to understand that it wasn’t a Cozy Coupe.
As I followed the twenty-eight steps required to put the cart together, my son came over. He pulled it away from me and tried to climb in. He’s seen the Cozy Coupe on television. He didn’t fit, because the Cozy Coupe Cart is far too small to put a child in. He realized he couldn’t use it to go anywhere, and he started to cry. Cue a trip to the toy store to acquire an actual Cozy Coupe.
Cozy Coupes are assembled in what I think of as a “soft-tooled” process. There’s plenty of wiggle room in each part. I made a mistake and put the top on before the door. I used a screwdriver to lever the body apart so I could jam the door in. Until the advent of “hard tooling” in the Eighties, real cars all had to have their doors adjusted after installation. Big men with crowbars and a deft touch adjusted the massive doors of a Coupe deVille to produce a perfect “click” on closing, and other big men who didn’t care as much let Chevrolet Caprices close with a clunk.
I made a few mistakes, actually. I rectified them in post-production, using a hammer and screwdriver to reset the alignment and reinstall the faux gas cap the right way. The famed Mercedes-Benz W126, perhaps the finest modern automobile in many ways, reportedly took longer to “adjust” after production than it did to make. Every W126 was taken off the line and then gone over with a fine-toothed comb by a group of impossibly skilled and knowledgeable people who were capable of shifting a dashboard, reassembling a wiring harness, adjusting ignition timing.
If you took what a W126 cost and adjusted in to today’s dollars, you would be in Bentley territory. The current S-Class is built in such a manner as to minimize post-production adjustment. As in my factory, doors and body panels have holes, not slots. That’s important. A slot can be adjusted, but it will also never truly be right. A hole is either right or wrong. Binary. Once upon a time, morality was binary and assembly was analog. Today, we reverse the process. There’s a visibly pregnant girl sitting next to me in the break room. Her fingers are smooth and naked. A young man smiles at her and makes small talk. It occurs to me that he could be the father, or perhaps they met yesterday, putting the left rear wheel on a small CUV.
It took me an hour to build a Cozy Coupe. I think of the the signs we have, the LED scoreboards that compare our planned production with our actual production. I imagine my sign stating that, although we had planned to build zero Cozy Coupes today, we ended up building one.
The end of my long walk, or perhaps the halfway point of it, was a loading dock where a young man presented me with a box. The components in the box were worth one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. It weighed eighteen pounds. We’d been waiting for it. I would perform my own sort of ritual in this cathedral later and the gods of commerce would be appeased by this sacrifice, these golden calves laid at their feet, and production could continue.
So much to do, so many cars to build, and one little car to build at home. I was quick-walking away when the man said, “Hey.” I stopped.
“What’s up?”
“Merry Christmas.”
And Baruth’s writing continues to improve. At the end of this piece I was left full of thought and contemplation.
What Dan said.. Good work, Jack. You’ve got to do something to gas up the Town Car…
+2… Great Stuff Jack… but working on the line, does that mean your state trotting, product launch diaries are history?
I should be done working just in time for the racing and press event seasons to start back up… I’ve done a few trips since taking the job, they are very cool about letting me wander off for a few days :)
Just put one of those together last year..Had to make some adjustments myself. I am not so handy so it took about thirty minutes longer for me and I used a drill. My son still likes it.
I assembled a Cozy Coupe for my toddler two years ago is still one of his most-loved toys. I was initially pleased to see the “made in USA” label on the box, but upon taking he parts out of the box, I saw quality lapses that reminded me of the horrible quality of several 70s and 80s Big-3 automobiles I’ve had the displeasure of driving (and pushing onto the shoulder after the engine kept dying). There were large (1″-2″ long) spiral shaped plastic strips dangling from drilled holes, many bits of plastic rattling around inside the hollow body and wheels, a missing part, and big crooked gaps between some parts no matter how much care I exercised in their assembly. So much for “soft tooling”. I ended up spending much time filing off sharp burrs, vacuuming out loose debris, etc. (“post production?”) to do a good job of it.
That’s funny, I had the same thoughts when I built my daughter’s not too long ago. I couldn’t believe the horrible fit and finish. Plastic flash was hanging off from nearly every piece (like 8 inches of stringy plastic) and body panels that should simply “pop” in had to be manhandled. I had to use lithium grease to get the pieces to slide in. I couldn’t believe how “off” something this simple was.
It’s sad to say, but I’m willing to bet if they moved the production overseas, fit and finish would go up dramatically. When I bought the car in the toy store, I was actually proud it said “Made in the USA”, when I was finished putting it together, I was embarrassed. No wonder all of this type of production has gone overseas, I’ve never seen Chi-Com quality that was that bad.
These were featured on an episode of “How It’s Made” — the drilling, burr and flash removal are done by hand after molding, and as far as I could tell, workers are given very little time per piece to do this. Obviously, since there was a TV crew filming, the persons performing these steps were the best they could find, but I’m sure that it’s a high-turnover job because of the repetitive nature of it, and the pay is likely low. These types of jobs are definitely in decline here – but there are hold-out industries that will hire those down on their luck and immigrants (no comment on legal status) because that labor pool is plentiful these days.
Edit: I guess I forgot the most important point — overuse of “soft” tooling is rampant these days, and it’s probably because it’s so much better than soft tooling of the past, when it could only be used for a few prototype revisions before you had to commit to the super-expensive “hard” tooling. Just another cost-cutting measure that shouldn’t be done for something that’s not likely to see many revisions (like a toy car).
Thanks for this
Once upon a time, morality was binary and assembly was analog.
Hmmm….. you could be a contenda….
Also, did your yoof get around the kitchen corners before the traction let go?
The escape scuttle leading from the deck below to the “weather deck” above emerged just in front of the 5″-38 naval rifle (look up any unknown terms ye landlubbers).
The itty-bitty destroyer escort strove mightily to “contain” the barking bite and recoil of that 5 incher but those ‘guns’ did have a kick and ample shooting from the gun line of ‘Nam to the frequent gunnery exercises took a heavy toll upon that escape scuttle’s ability to retain its sealing ability.
Arduous efforts of many types to seal that scuttle were doomed.
Whenever sea state conditions led to water over the bow and over the foc’sle, the water poured in to the space below.
Any guesses as to who was responsible foe maintaining and cleaning that space?
Departed the vessel for a new duty station with joyful glee.
That tub is now rusting in peace at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean after use as a target for gunnery and torpedoes.
So – you were the “bilge rat” :-)
I’m thankful I was a graphic artist in the Air Force back then, in Northern California for my four years! All I had to do was qualify with a WW2-vintage .30 cal. M-1 Carbine! That pop-gun was so old and rattled so bad, I hit the other guy’s target too many times! But boy did I enjoy my 1964 Chevy as indicated above!
I usually refrain from profanity on this site, but forgive me:
“In a society which has largely forgotten the divine and chosen to worship commerce, production, and marketing, this is a cathedral; still, I’m walking quickly without a genuflection to the rows of engine-transmission assemblies suspended above me, because I need to rush home and observe the same rituals. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine closet.”
Fucking brilliant.
About the door adjustment. It’s still done. 1st step when the doors are assembled to the body, 2nd step in final line.
About the rework, I always tolgo il capello on the magic those workers are able to do to fix defects.
Same go for metal reworkers and painters that fix small dents and touch up paint before the ACOM check.
About the holes and all plant layout, thank Lean and among its many tools, Poka Yoke. A part will fit only one way. See the electrical connectors and try to connect them wrongly. I bet the tool for tightening the tyres on the tall FWD wagon has a distance already set or 5 axles, with a controlled torque to assure quality. If very modern, your tool will be connected to a computer that will check the adjustment was done correctly and if not, possibly will stop the line or trigger an alarm.
I’d like a Cozy Coupe for my son. It will have to wait until we move. I also wanted to buy him one of those electric Hummers (FTW, by the way) which he liked a LOT (we had to use a pry bar to take him off one in a store, and making a big berrinche). The electric Hummer will be Niño Jesus gift next year.
I had to perform a door adjustment on Moby Dodge, the nasty 1978 D100 pickup we used at the naval ship overhaul facility where I was employed. My passenger unwisely opened the door into a 30-knot wind at the end of a pier, and the wind took the door out of his hand and slammed it against the stops. A slow ride back to the shop with him holding the door closed as far as it would go, and then a 2-foot 2×4 under the door and a 5-foot one levered against the floor lifted it back into place.
Here’s an interesting, but sadly, true story of an old friend who worked at the Chrysler plant in Fenton, Missouri, about 40 years ago:
He saw cars come off the assembly line that had all sorts of problems and were rolled into a special area for re-work. One was a two-door that had a four-door, fixed-back front seat installed. Another was a car with a floor shoft AND a column shift. Which one actually worked? Beats me! Still another one had two transmissions, an automatic installed and a standard transmission tossed in the engine compartment – probably messed up a lot of stuff! And finally, somehow, someway, a car had TWO engines, one, a 6 cyl, the other, a V8! One was installed and the other was jammed in the engine compartment, really screwing up everything! Simply amazing stuff. I believe labor troubles might have had something to do with it, too. Also, it was common to catch someone on the parking lot selling guns out of his trunk. Where he obtained the firearms, no one asked. All this was true.
While factories may indeed be the cathedrals of our modern technological mindset, the cathedral of the masses still remains the shopping mall.
The tendency in scientific management and technological production has always been to replace the analogue with the binary because this reduces production’s dependency on that rare “group of impossibly skilled and knowledgeable people” that represent the old traditions of the creative artisan. Simply put, the more techno-scientific, ‘binary,’ or automated the production process, the less its reliance upon the sometimes variable, less predictable and less ‘efficient’ expertise of creative, skilled artisans, and hence the more it can fill those roles with anonymous workers performing automated, mechanical tasks.
The binary is absolutist, and the techno-scientific emphasis on practical, engineering-oriented goals will always prefer the absolute ideal of On or Off, True or False over the analogue reality of ‘more or less.’
A good, reflective piece.
Awesome piece. Merry Christmas, Jack.
Also, what was in that box? My guess is some kind of factory robot component or something. I can’t imagine it’s something that actually goes into the cars.
My NDA actually keeps me from saying exactly what I do or touch in the plant. It’s ridiculous, but every once in a while I hear something that would make scandalous TTAC coverage… but I know that I’m not the only person on the company network reading the site :)
What is 16 pounds of cocaine worth?
Send it to my place then I’ll tell you.
Everyone should work in a factory for a while at least once in their life. It should be a requirement for anyone who aspires to political office. “How It’s Made” is incredibly unrealistic.
It was a freezer factory in Ohio for me. Afterward I almost wanted to say; “Workers of the world unite.”
Amen to that. Worked in the Dolly Madison Cakes factory on Figueroa Street in LA — night shift 10:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Schedule was to work 3 nights, then have a night off. Then work 2 nights, then have a night off. Then repeat.
The older guys with families actually liked this schedule!
I agree. Working for a summer in a cherry production shed in eastern Washington state during high school gave me appreciation for how hard many people work for a few bucks an hour.
Happy New Year, Jack.
Nice piece. Keep yourself in one piece, so you can write some more! ;-)
Brilliant writing; I registered just so I could tell you so. Happy New Year!
The Cozy Coupe, another one of the best cars I’ve ever owned, not counting Hot Wheels. My in-laws bought one for my older kid when she was the ‘only’ kid, it had a fairly sedate indoors-only life until the second child came along. Then we took it outside and the kids ran the thing up and down the driveway for hours on end. The one-door, one-occupant capacity was the key to harmonious play. The battery-powered Barbie Jeep was way cooler, but it started too many fights over who got to drive.
Definitely good times.
Great writing Jack! Really enjoyed the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, but it doesn’t show all the work required to get parts to the assembly line. Wish there was some way to see the real operations of an automobile factory.
It was a sad day 3 years ago when a company I had worked for shifted assembly work from a contract manufacturer with a plant in Texas to a factory in China. Engineers in my group used to be required to drive 3 miles to the CM and inspect first article boards at each manufacturing step. Helped find problems before production started and learning how the manufacturing and test process worked improved future products. Now we just get yield reports from China and some prototypes without ever seeing the factory.
That Cozy Coupe Cart is just absurd. We’ve got an original Cozy Coupe which my son absolutely loves. I’m sure you’re trip to the store for one was well worth the look on your son’s face once it was assembled.
Brilliant article Jack. Thanks.