Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadheadNM
It seems odd that one plant for one year would shift the assembly process where a door component would be placed upstream from the paint booth leaving other components of door assembly to follow.
|
It's possible. There was variation in the process between assembly plants and even variation within the same plant across model years.
There was even variation within the same plant within the same model year: when I started at Flint the front end sheetmetal was installed as a preassembled unit (ie "buck built") on Line 2 and as individual pieces ("Piecemeal") on Line 1. Same product, two wildly different processes under the same roof.
Keep in mind these plants were all build differently, with their own unique footprints, typically in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. This can drive different process just based on the available real estate and where significant "monuments" (hardware or equipment that you are really loathe to relocate during a product or process change) were placed. Sister plants, or plants with the same basic architecture, weren't built until much later, like the GM Orion, Kansas City and "Poletown" (ie Detroit Hamtramck) plants in the 1980s.
Also keep in mind there is a constant creep to add parts later in the process. Everyone wants their part put on in the last station on the final line, so you have to be forever vigilant to keep pushing the work farther upstream, trying to keep the work load generally leveled for each production operator. As a result there is always a little bit of tuning going on.
So - back to the subject at hand: Door Latches. Yes - it is possible for St Louis to be an outlier, installing the door latches before paint while everybody else was doing it after paint. Also - I seem to recall a move was made once the use of the ELPO dip tanks became more prevalent. In some plants, like Pontiac passenger car assembly, latches were installed before paint but were getting gunked up from the ELPO dip. The installation of the latches was moved to the trim area as a result.
K