It turns out that Detroit, Michigan is nothing like I thought it was.  I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting — maybe I thought that a place called the Motor City would be… I don’t know… greasier?  More blue collar? But I think the term Modern Industrial Complex applies much better, and with a Starbucks on every corner, major glass skyscrapers, and an excellent, if rather alarming, road system, I think any modern city dweller would be happy to call Detroit home.

Let me clarify the alarming road system before I go on.  the roads are fine, but there’s a disconcerting lack of signalling on the part of the drivers that makes traffic look rather like a free-for-all to a stranger, like me for example.  And I don’t mean that a few people didn’t signal. No one signalled.  It was a conspiracy of non-signalling.  On a six lane highway, travelling at or above the limit of 70 mph, with traffic merging from both sides, no one bothered to signal their intentions.  Yikes.  And yet… as I clung determinedly to the second right lane to try to figure out what was happening, I realized that it was all working beautifully.  No one needed to signal, because as soon as they moved, other cars made room.  I even tried it myself, and sure enough, what I thought was a slightly risky move into a small space turned out to be perfectly safe.  Instead of being random and aggressive as I first saw it, this turned out to be one of the most accommodating systems ever.  Huh. You do you, Detroit.

But one of the primary reasons that I visited Detroit in the first place was to tour the Ford Rouge Factory.  If you’re from the US, the name has been synonymous with streamlined manufacturing ever since Henry Ford built the original factory and began production there in 1928.  This is the birthplace of the automotive assembly line.  The factory is located on the Rouge River, which gives it its name, and incorporates 93 buildings, with over 16 million square feet of floor space.  According to the tour, all materials are brought in raw, and all fabrication is done at the factory, from metal stamping to glass making.

Although I wouldn’t particularly call myself a Ford fan, I do love an efficient and well designed machine, and the factory itself was certainly that!  We were told that the Rouge factory currently produces only F-150 pickup trucks, all prepurchased made-to-order, at a rate of 7,000 per week.  First of all… are there really 7,000 new F-150s ordered each week?!?!  Apparently yes, and looking around at the roads since I was on the tour, they are indeed ubiquitous.  In order to go on the tour, I parked in the ample lots at the Henry Ford Museum and took the shuttle bus.  There was no photography allowed on the assembly line or in the cinemas, but I was able to get some pictures elsewhere.

The assembly line was like Disney for trucks, each chassis on it’s own pallet, raised or lowered on an accordion platform to the right height as it moved through all the stations, with quietly efficient elves working around it.  The whole line looked like this, with the yellow line being the tour pathway.

There were a few parts of the line that I particularly liked watching:

• Rear window installation — done by robot with laser alignment
• Head liner installation — done by a team of four, although it didn’t look like anyone was paying attention, as soon as one guy dropped the liner, four people caught it and installed it in seconds
• Side window installation — one burly guy seemed to be doing every window, dropping them in by hand and applying the seals
• Headlight installation — a team of two, one for each light, with the woman on the right light dancing as she worked
• Attaching the tailgate to the box — they go through painting together but detatched, and the attachment takes just a few seconds
• Final inspection — each truck is driven over rumble strips, run at 60 mph, and undergoes detailed tolerance inspection via lasers on robot arms, everything from the headlights and the horn and radio are tested

Unfortunately we weren’t able to see the marriage of the frame and engine and the chassis, but the whole line was very interesting to watch, and I was really impressed with how quiet it was as well.  You could have a conversation without shouting, which is more than I can say for some restaurants I’ve been in.  Since I did my MBA with a specialization in Operations Research, I was just as interested in the processes underlying production, and especially the inventory.  They seemed to be using a ‘just in time’ inventory system, with materials delivered and parts made just as they’re required, thus cutting down on transportation and stocking costs.  I also thought it was great that the assembly line workers were empowered, by which I mean that if they saw something wrong, for example a loose seal, they could just go ahead and fix it, not being required to send it back to the place where it was installed — overspecialization can be a curse.  I saw that happen a number of times, and these kind of policies really added to the efficiency of the line.

In addition to the assembly line, the tour also included two short films, a Hall of Fame, and a view of the entire plant from the rooftop viewing platform.  The first film was very informative, and took the viewer through a history of Ford, the man and the company.  I found it interesting that they were very up front in talking about Henry Ford’s resistance to the unionization of the work force, and even some of the violence that resulted.  In the end, though, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and the Ford Motor Company seem to have formed an excellent partnership that enabled them to work together through the oil crisis and the GFC.

The second film was what I might call “modern kitsch.”  It had lasers, it had thumping music, flashing lights, and an F-150 that rose up out of the floor and drove straight at you.  You could feel the vibration of the wheels over the road, you could feel the revving of the engine in your chest, you were blinded by the oncoming headlights.  Yeah, it was actually pretty awesome!  No dry ice fog, though — I should suggest that…

The Hall of Fame was kind of what you would expect from Ford, starting with the Model A and evolving through the Thunderbird and the Mustang.  Yep.

The view from the rooftop really showed the size of the whole campus, and the green rooftops were particularly impressive.  This is 10.4 acres in area, and planted with a ground cover called sedum, which absorbs 4 million gallons of rainwater and results in significant stormwater management savings, lowers the temperature in the factory by 10 degrees and saves on energy costs, and protects the roof material so that it will last twice as long as a traditional factory roof.  Apparently it’s the largest green roof anywhere.

The Ford Motor Company has a reputation for forward thinking and innovation and in 2000, Bill Ford, great grandson of Henry Ford, announced major renovations of the Rouge Factory.  Much of the assembly line is new, and green initiatives such as this roof, solar panels, and a surrounding wetland habitat are part of those renovations.  The basic layout of the campus remains as it was in Henry’s time however.

And here’s the reason for it all — or rather, the 7,000 reasons each week — the Ford F-150 pickup, and all of it’s awards.

I spent a good three hours on the Rouge Factory tour, and could have spent even more.  In the end, I took the shuttle back to the Henry Ford Museum.  I didn’t go in the museum this time, but it actually looked huge and had an excellent collection, not just of cars, but of trains, and other technical innovations, and including iconic vehicles such as the bus Rosa Parks made her famous stand on, and the limo that JFK was riding in when he was shot.  Ford was also a good friend of Thomas Edison, so I understand that there’s an excellent exhibit on him as well.  Ford also set up a model village at the site called the Greenfield Village, where he collected iconic structures from American history to preserve them, including the lab where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the Wright Brothers’ workshop, and the home of Noah Webster where he wrote the first American dictionary.  He collected buildings, it was a museum of buildings — wow.  My goal was really to see the factory, but Ford was really a remarkable man, a strong proponent of education and innovation, and a renaissance man in his own way, so it would be well worth spending at least a few days here sometime.  Also, the grounds are lovely.

As a final note, I’d like to say that, although yes, there were gift shops, they were small and selling was most definitely not the main attraction here.  It really was about producing good vehicles efficiently, and giving something back as well.  I’ll end with this quote from Bill Ford that seems to sum up their philosophy nicely, and was indeed what I saw there:

“A good company delivers excellent products and services. 

A great company does all that and strives to make the world a better place.”

— Bill Ford

Still not going to give up my Toyota though!! 🙂