I worked at the Chevrolet Janesville Wisconsin Assembly plant from 1976 to 2010, when the plant closed.
In 1976, the Flint plant of 1936 looked more modern, cleaner, and better lit than Janesville! The assembly process is nearly identical to the truck and car lines we had back then.
Janesville made many improvements over the years, as did all GM facilities. But in the end, auto assembly isn't much different today then it was in 1936. Robotics and procedural changes only occured if there was an economic advantage. Safety isn't a very high concern... excepting that a corporate safety award will also get the plant manager a bonus. The body shop used kevlar gloves and sleeves for the last 10 years... saved lots of fingers! ( I almost lost one when sheet metal cut through my leatrer glove like it was made of paper ).
I had many different jobs in many different departments. Upon hiring, I was man-handling pickup-truck box side panels to the line ( each weighed about 70 lbs. ). A few years after, I worked on the frame line... riveting frames with huge rivet guns.. it was very much like the film showed... but we had a lot more parts and rivets!
When I retired ( at plant closing ), I was team coordinator of the final inspection line. Previous to that, I was the team coordinator of the body shop inspection group ( a very interesting job ).
My first inspection job was as the startup man on the final line. I had 18 years seniority. Visitors were amazed that the engines weren't tested prior to starting the vehicle. 3 of us would start them up and look for leaks and listen for noises... we were actually pretty good at identifying problems. My father had the same job 15 years earlier than I... and had the same foreman. By plant closing, we had 5 men starting them up, and they were plugged into a very costly electronic device, that did the same thing 3 of us did a few years earlier. The devices were constantly being tweaked and fudged to make the statistics acceptable to Detroit... the head offices. The new process was not any more reliable at finding defects than the old process... but it sent data!
Lots of memories this morning. I hired in at $8.00 per hour. My old job, working for a newspaper printing plant, paid $3.65. I had kids, they needed to eat. I stayed for the money, which was always pretty good.
Dick
