Excellent manufacturing video.

[wbradley]

Cool stuff Tcoat. And you said building the plant, meaning setting up the assembly tooling? You don't have to say but I'm guessing some version of what is now known as Stellantis (which is so foreign to me I had to Google "Chrysler's new name").
I have read a bit regards to Toyota and their jidoka practice, where they pretty much have the engineers do the assembly by hand until they can intelligently compose their automation to work with humans.

Regards to the hole in the wrong place, at one time pretty much all North American manufacturers would get the vehicle right thru assembly with the hole in the wrong place and keep the line moving continuously whereas at Toyota for example, the line would be stopped when the fault was discovered in order to prevent repetition of errors. Employees are actually ENCOURAGED to stop the line. In fact a line can realistically be stopped 1000x in a month (for very short duration probably almost always). Its just a button, and they use it to improve production, not just push it through to be corrected afterward wherever possible.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by wbradley

Cool stuff Tcoat. And you said building the plant, meaning setting up the assembly tooling? You don't have to say but I'm guessing some version of what is now known as Stellantis (which is so foreign to me I had to Google "Chrysler's new name").
I have read a bit regards to Toyota and their jidoka practice, where they pretty much have the engineers do the assembly by hand until they can intelligently compose their automation to work with humans.

Regards to the hole in the wrong place, at one time pretty much all North American manufacturers would get the vehicle right thru assembly with the hole in the wrong place and keep the line moving continuously whereas at Toyota for example, the line would be stopped when the fault was discovered in order to prevent repetition of errors. Employees are actually ENCOURAGED to stop the line. In fact a line can realistically be stopped 1000x in a month (for very short duration probably almost always). Its just a button, and they use it to improve production, not just push it through to be corrected afterward wherever possible.

Yes the company of many names.

North American manufacturing started to with the Japanese methods back in the mid 90s. They were not quiet fast enough with adopting them though and that resulted in the big bail out in 2008. Since then the changes have made them pretty much identical even if they do use American terms for the methods.

Yes line workers are permitted to stop the line for issues. But it is still the team of specialists that will show up and fix the issue. It will be done very quickly. Rest assured though that the reason for stopping the line had better be good! Every minute of downtime costs tens of thousands of dollar.

[StE92ve]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

I have been in a dozen different assembly plants over the last 30 years and they are all about the same so no secrets to hide. From BMW to Ford they all use the same methods now. In fact the Gunma plant where this was videoed is still pretty old school with a lot of work still done by hand. There were a pile of ergonomic issues in that video that just would not fly today even in the oldest of the North American assembly plants.

IIRC, didn't they say this plant was 3 years old?

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Many will go their whole career doing one part and wouldn't even know how to do another without training. Any deviations from the norm and they will stand there with a blank look until somebody comes and fixes it for them. Since changing a drivetrain is more than just bolting in different parts you would not have a gun big enough to force them to do anything.

When I toured BMW plants, it was mentioned that the assembly workers rotate from position to position to keep them engaged.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by StE92ve

IIRC, didn't they say this plant was 3 years old?





When I toured BMW plants, it was mentioned that the assembly workers rotate from position to position to keep them engaged.

If they did it was in reference to something else. Same plant that made the first gen and it made Kei cars for years before that. It is a pretty old facility as far as Japanese ones go.


Yes rotation is the best and most plants do it. But it still only means knowing a half dozen of or so jobs out of a couple of hundred. As far as keeping them "engaged" goes that is more HR hype than reality. After doing the exact same task several hundred times a shift moving to another almost identical task and doing it several hundred times sort of losses meaning. Anybody that has ever done high rate assembly knows what I mean

[RZNT4R]

Originally Posted by azndavepgh

It's interesting how they have different models coming down the assembly line instead of grouping them by the same model.

yes, very interesting how they've got multiple models and LHD and RHD going down the line at once. That speaks to me at how much thought was put into building them alike, the only way that can work is if the individual components fit together the same basic way with the same tools.

This might not seem like much of a thing, until you've needed to use like 3 different tools to take one single thing off of a german car.

[StE92ve]

@ 37.16 you see the front ends of a GR86 and a BRZ in the same color. I think I just made up my mind which twin I'm going to order....at least for today.

[StE92ve]

Love @26:03 the correct parts bin door for the badges open up for the assembler so he doesn't have to think which car gets which badge.

[T-Steve]

Wow, I have got to say that is one of the best car manufacturing videos I've seen. The portion describing the differences in rear suspension between BRZ and GR86 was very good.

Thank you very much Dreamwonder.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

IfYes rotation is the best and most plants do it. But it still only means knowing a half dozen of or so jobs out of a couple of hundred. As far as keeping them "engaged" goes that is more HR hype than reality. After doing the exact same task several hundred times a shift moving to another almost identical task and doing it several hundred times sort of losses meaning. Anybody that has ever done high rate assembly knows what I mean

Pretty much sounds like my thoughts on a MT being more "engaging" after driving them for several hundred thousand miles.

I have family members that are members of UAW and a sister who worked an assembly line for Trane for 30 years. It's pretty much exactly as you describe.

[OkieSnuffBox]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Yes the company of many names.

North American manufacturing started to with the Japanese methods back in the mid 90s. They were not quiet fast enough with adopting them though and that resulted in the big bail out in 2008. Since then the changes have made them pretty much identical even if they do use American terms for the methods.

Yes line workers are permitted to stop the line for issues. But it is still the team of specialists that will show up and fix the issue. It will be done very quickly. Rest assured though that the reason for stopping the line had better be good! Every minute of downtime costs tens of thousands of dollar.

Which is pretty sad when you consider "The Toyota Way" began being implemented in the 1930s.

[dreamwonder]

Looks like previous gen rear subframe inserts will continue to work.

At 12:41ish

[Grif]

You also get a good look at the full size spare in the BRZ. Potentially the AUDM build?

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Grif

You also get a good look at the full size spare in the BRZ. Potentially the AUDM build?

Yeah I noticed that too. Who gets a spare?

[KyleV]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Yeah I noticed that too. Who gets a spare?

Australia