Great Lakes Brochure
LIFE ON THE LINE
By Roger Rapoport
A week spent building cars gives an insight into the industry's problems "Leave Your Brains at Home".
Wixom, Mich. - The Ford Motor Co. auto assembly line here is an impressive sight. Bare ftames are put on a slowly moving conveyor. Wheels, engines, seats, body sections and hundreds of other components are added along the way. At the end of the quartermile, 90-minute trip, finished cars are driven off to be inspected and shipped to dealers.
It takes some 275 workers to put the cars together on the Wixom line. To hear a guide at Ford's big River Rouge plant, a popular tourist stop in nearby Dearborn, tell it, life on the line in a snap. "Each worker on an assembly line has one little job to do", he says. "It's simple. Anyone could learn it in two minutes".
That's bunk.
Working on the line is grueling and ftustrating, and while it may be repetitive, it's not simple. I learned how tough it can be by working for six days at Ford's Wixom plant, which assembles Thunderbirds and Lincoln Continentals, I learned first-hand why 250,000 auto workers are unhappy about working conditions. Ford calls Wixom the "most progressive automobile assembly plant on the North American Continent". Facilities at the lO-year-old plant here are indeed better than those at many of the 46 other auto assembly plants scattered around the country. Wixom is clean and well lighted by auto industry standards. It boasts adequate rest rooms, plenty of drinking foundations and an air-conditioned cafeteria. Even so, working conditions are less than ideal.
Problems of Quality
I also learned why quality control is a major problem for the industry and why so many Americans complain about poor workmanship in the cars they buy. I saw one blue fender installed on a white car and saw the steering column fall off another newly built car. Wixom's repair area, nearly the size of a football field, usually had a line-up of 500 cars waiting to have steering
By Roger Rapoport
A week spent building cars gives an insight into the industry's problems "Leave Your Brains at Home".
Wixom, Mich. - The Ford Motor Co. auto assembly line here is an impressive sight. Bare ftames are put on a slowly moving conveyor. Wheels, engines, seats, body sections and hundreds of other components are added along the way. At the end of the quartermile, 90-minute trip, finished cars are driven off to be inspected and shipped to dealers.
It takes some 275 workers to put the cars together on the Wixom line. To hear a guide at Ford's big River Rouge plant, a popular tourist stop in nearby Dearborn, tell it, life on the line in a snap. "Each worker on an assembly line has one little job to do", he says. "It's simple. Anyone could learn it in two minutes".
That's bunk.
Working on the line is grueling and ftustrating, and while it may be repetitive, it's not simple. I learned how tough it can be by working for six days at Ford's Wixom plant, which assembles Thunderbirds and Lincoln Continentals, I learned first-hand why 250,000 auto workers are unhappy about working conditions. Ford calls Wixom the "most progressive automobile assembly plant on the North American Continent". Facilities at the lO-year-old plant here are indeed better than those at many of the 46 other auto assembly plants scattered around the country. Wixom is clean and well lighted by auto industry standards. It boasts adequate rest rooms, plenty of drinking foundations and an air-conditioned cafeteria. Even so, working conditions are less than ideal.
Problems of Quality
I also learned why quality control is a major problem for the industry and why so many Americans complain about poor workmanship in the cars they buy. I saw one blue fender installed on a white car and saw the steering column fall off another newly built car. Wixom's repair area, nearly the size of a football field, usually had a line-up of 500 cars waiting to have steering