1967 Camaro assembly line

[Kurt S]

Thanks Keith!

Our plant converted from block floor to cement. Some millwright decided they would be great firewood for his cabin up north. A few months later, the plant is in deep shit with the EPA. Turns out the blocks were leaching chromium and other nasties into one of Michigan's pristine rivers. Took a while to chase down the pile, and work it back to the plant. You can bet that they made sure those blocks were properly disposed of from then on!

I remember a purple short-bed truck coming down the line with a purple long-bed on it. Turns out the long bed truck with the short bed had come down the line about 20 minutes before. They blocked up the bed so it would go down the line and attached what they could, the rest went into the bed to be shorted out at the repair station.
Didn't happen often - there's not enough room to in the plant for that!

I'll add that much of this is discussed in JohnZ's article, including the difference between LOS and NOR front sheet metal. http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

[Too Many Projects]

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

I feel your pain; been on both sides of that equation.

Folks get mighty touchy when you start shutting the line down.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

I was just thinking the other day about an incident we had on the Volt program.

In the Hamtramck plant the first place the new content would hit would be the IP line, where the dash assembly was built up and the instrument cluster, radio, HVAC controls, etc, would be installed. We would hang out there in order to get an early look at how the options were broadcasting.

One time I was standing there with my plant host, the plant planner, and the line stopped. Having grown up on the assembly line I’m a bit sensitive to when it goes down so I cut into our conversation abruptly and asked “why are we down?”

“Uh – we’re on break” he said, looking around nervously.

“Good” I said. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t my fault”.

HA HA, right?

In about two minutes one of the other engineers comes running over, all in a huff. “SEYMORE!” he says. “We’re not on break; we're down on the IP line and IT’S YOUR FAULT!”.

A bit surprised at this sudden change of status I sauntered over and there was a crowd of neckties around the radio install. The line superintendent (the foreman's boss) was there and took the opportunity to show boat a bit by ripping me a new one about engineering changes, and how stupid engineers are, and how disruptive temporary changes are, etc. It was in that supportive environment I had to figure out what was going on. It seemed that one of the inspection features had the line shut down, the symptom being that as the operator tried to scan one of the bar codes the reader didn’t recognize it as the right part and stopped the line. After a couple minutes I asked her to show me what she was doing.

“I’m scanning this” she said “but it won’t go.”

That’s when I noticed she was scanning the wrong bar code; Operator error. I showed her the uplevel part number and code and when she hit that with the laser reader “…whirrrrrr” everything spun back to life. The crowd quietly disbursed and everybody went back to whatever they were doing.

I just thought it was funny that it was "wasn’t my fault/was my fault/wasn’t my fault".

Do you suppose I ever got an apology from the superintendent for improperly, inappropriately and incorrectly dressing me down in front of a whole passel of plant and engineering personnel?

Of course not.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I remember a purple short-bed truck coming down the line with a purple long-bed on it. Turns out the long bed truck with the short bed had come down the line about 20 minutes before. They blocked up the bed so it would go down the line and attached what they could, the rest went into the bed to be shorted out at the repair station.
Didn't happen often - there's not enough room to in the plant for that!

That's one of the good things about building pickup trucks (I guess) - you just throw all the loose parts in the bed and kick that can on down the road.

We had a truck one time that didn't get the hole cut out for the floor shifter. Didn't realize it until body drop, when the cab wouldn't sit down on the mounts.

The repair man rode that one down the final line, cutting the hole with a hammer and chisel, while the cab was teetering on the trans tower. The fenders, hood, batteries, etc all went in the pickup box to get installed in heavy repair.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I'll add that much of this is discussed in JohnZ's article, including the difference between LOS and NOR front sheet metal. http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

I always enjoy reading John Z's write up at CRG.

I went back just now to read about the front end sheet metal and noticed a couple things:

1 - about shimming:

What we used to do for fender shims is tape a packet together, like 3 shims, ahead of time and we would run those all day whether the truck we were currently building needed it or not.

Eventually the final repair supervisor would call back and say something encouraging, like "SEYMORE!! YOU IDIOT!! WTH ARE YOU THINKING?!?! ALL THESE FENDERS ARE RUNNING HIGH!! ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING AT THESE TRUCKS?!? TAKE A SHIM OUT BEFORE I COME BACK THERE AND SHOW YOU HOW TO DO THIS!!" I can just imagine the spittle flying into the phone mouthpiece.

So we would start running a new shim pack, like 2 shims, until he called again with his latest observation.

Basically it was to address "macro trends". You had about 45 seconds to complete the truck in front of you and move to the next one; that's not enough time to fit and re-fit each individual truck.

This technique would get you close on the majority of vehicles. There was a repair station at the end of my area. There was also a short moving repair line (two, actually) at the end of final line. If they could fix them there while on the move then they would; otherwise it would be out to a stationary repair stall in "heavy repair" for the really bad ones.

I should add that some of the repairs did not consist of removing the bolt or adding/deleting shims. Often the repair consisted of bending, twisting or hammering while the line was moving.

I had four guys hanging fenders, btw. One at the front and one at the rear of the LH fender; one at the front and one at the rear of the RH fender. They could do the job by themselves if properly motivated, like if their buddy wanted to punch out a couple jobs early, or to help move one or two jobs when the line first started and there weren't enough operators - but I would never ask them to do that.

2- squaring fixtures:

We never had much luck with fixtures of any kind. Usually what would happen is the guys would use them whenever there was management or any other spectators around, but when not being directly observed they wouldn't use them, especially if they were big/bulky/hanging overhead on balancers.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I remember a purple short-bed truck coming down the line with a purple long-bed on it. Turns out the long bed truck with the short bed had come down the line about 20 minutes before. They blocked up the bed so it would go down the line and attached what they could, the rest went into the bed to be shorted out at the repair station.
Didn't happen often - there's not enough room to in the plant for that!

Fortunately - you don't have to keep them all inside!

Here's a picture of Flint Assembly's back yard. These are all vehicles awaiting repair of some kind or to be driven over to the shipping yard.

Flint Assembly, Flint Metal Fab and the V8 Engine plant are all co-located on the same piece of property bounded by I-75, I-69, Van Slyke and Bristol Roads. I've seen them completely fill the back yard and flow over into the adjacent parking lots with repair jobs*.

In fact - some times we would lose vehicles back there. They would usually turn up during model changeover when the repair back log would get worked down. Often by then we had already built and shipped a replacement vehicle made to those same specifications.

K

*During the chip shortage vehicles were also stored at a defunct horse race track (Sports Creek) in nearby Swartz Creek Michigan. That is pretty typical, as Ford used to store vehicles at the Cedar Point amusement park, for example (they ended up losing quite a few from there as well - stolen).

[Keith Seymore]

One other thought relative to moving all these vehicles around:

For those of you familiar with the UAW and the plant structure you know there are multiple jobs and job classifications. For example, there is an "assembler" classification with an associated rate of pay, and then maybe a "utility assembler" classification for a few pennies more an hour, on up through repair and skilled trades. Advancement through these non-skilled designations is based solely upon seniority.

One of those classifications is "driver". So - there are a particular set of people (and pay rate) whose sole function is to drive the vehicle off the end of the line, perform the roll test, shuttle the vehicle to the various short repair lines inside the building, and/or shuttle vehicle between locations outside the plant.

The assembly line would be scheduled to run a particular time period in advance (say 8 hours, or 10 hours, or 11 hours) but could spontaneously be increased (or decreased) to meet the immediate need. For example, final might go "8.0" but trim might go "8.2" or "8.5" in order to re-fill any buffers that had been depleted throughout the shift. Cab shop might go "9.0" that day for the same reason. The change would be communicated through shouts up and down the line, often before the foreman would receive the official news by phone.

After running all day teams would be assigned to work overtime, after the line shut down, to work the repair down. Often times it felt like a punitive measure, especially if it had been a tough day with a lot of repair. Hourly volunteers would be solicited to drive out back, for overtime pay and at the (typically higher) driver pay rate, and foremen would take turns in an attempt to spread the load out.

I say all this to say: you might work a scheduled 11 hour day, then get tapped to work another hour or two out back working repair. Then go home, sleep, and come back in the next day to do it all again.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

The assembly line would be scheduled to run a particular time period in advance (say 8 hours, or 10 hours, or 11 hours) but could spontaneously be increased (or decreased) to meet the immediate need. For example, final might go "8.0" but trim might go "8.2" or "8.5" in order to re-fill any buffers that had been depleted throughout the shift. Cab shop might go "9.0" that day for the same reason. The change would be communicated through shouts up and down the line, often before the foreman would receive the official news by phone.

One tenth of an hour = 6 minutes. Everything was done in 6 minute increments.

Line 1 first shift would eat lunch from 10:12 to 10:42 am.

Line 2 first shift would eat lunch from 10:54 to 11:24.

Meanwhile, these days, I cannot remember if I ate lunch or not.

K

[Mr70]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Meanwhile, these days, I cannot remember if I ate lunch or not.

Keith,First,thanks for all your knowledge & details about this process.
Second,What could one do if you didn't want to eat Lunch in that 30 Min period back then?
Could you drive to a FF restaurant nearby,or read the Newspaper in an open area outside to pass the time,or did you have to stay inside?