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Good question.
In a typical GM
plant, cars come off the end of the line at 55 an
hour.
From a dealer
standpoint, we have ordered a new Buick and had it
delivered to us off the truck in as little as 10
days. That is the exception, and probably the
factory needed orders badly, so they actually
started to build the car before they even got our
order for it.
If nobody had
ordered it, it would have been built and sent to a
regional warehouse, and the "factory men"
(District Sales Mgrs) would then have to get on
the phone and try to cajole their dealers to help
them out and take a couple more cars (that are
already built and in storage).
As a car is going
thru the process of being built, its many
components and sub-assemblies may be made in
locations far away from the final assembly plant.
Dash assemblies, electronic components, wiring
harnesses, gas tanks, brake parts, seats, carpets,
tail lights, etc etc. They all have to be built
and and sub-assembled and shipped on a very
precise time schedule, so they reach the assembly
plant (like Fairfax), only minutes before they are
needed. It's called "Just-in-time", and the
Japaneses are the ones who came up with it,
to save money.
So at the assembly
plant when a certain car is destined to be
assembled at an exact time, first the frame starts
moving on the line. The tires are unloaded from
the railroad box car that comes right into the
plant, and they are stacked in the exact sequence
so the right size tires are mounted onto the exact
wheels and sent on to be mounted onto the car.
Basic components are mounted to the frame, and the
body has to be perfectly timed to meet the frame
and be bolted to it, as it travels down the line.
Each component in turn meets the car, and is
assembled to it. Each part has to be the exact
correct one for that particular car.
Now back to the
original question. As the dealer, I order
the exact car my customer wants. Up until the
time the body gets painted, the color can be
changed to match my order. Up until the time the
interior trim color and quality choice must be
specified, I can change it to match my customer's
wishes. Same with the sound system, and all the
options, etc. So when I ordered that car that
only took 10 days to get, much of the car was
already built, and the factory compared my order
to what was in production and un-spoken-for, and
did a match-up.
Someone did a study
a few years ago, and decided GM could build
100,000 cars, with every one of them being
different from all the rest, because there are so
many combinations of options.
If you stop and
think about it you'll conclude that it can't be
done. Yet every day Fairfax cranks them out
at 55 per hour, and they are beautiful and almost
perfect. Impossible, but there they are.
When
I was the Buick "factory man" for NY City, I
would drive to work down the
West
Side Highway, and I would look at all the
tall buildings, the heavy traffic, and everything
that goes on in New York City every day, and Id
say to myself, "This is not possible". Yet
every day it functioned. Millions of people did
their job, went home, and we all made it thru
another day.
The same thing
applies at the
Fairfax Assembly Plant. Every piece of a
new LaCrosse, every nut and bolt, every stitch in
the upholstery, every connection in the wiring
harnesses, every person on the line, everything
comes together at the exact precise time,
positioned and tightened to the exact torque,
installed exactly in the right place, and at the
end of the line, the next driver jumps in, turns
the key, and it starts. He drives away to the
storage yard, where the repair crews will read the
inspection ticket that tells them what the
inspectors said about the car. They will
take care of the imperfections before the car is
shipped. Maybe a little scratch from an "OOPS",
maybe a defect in the windshield glass that will
have to be replaced, maybe a seat trim that
doesn't match the car. The final repair people
are skilled in everything, much like the people in
a dealership who have to fix whatever is wrong.
So the long answer
to your question is, it takes years, it
takes months, and it takes a couple
of hours to build a new LaCrosse, depending
on how far back from the final drive-off at the
end of the production line you want to go.
How do I know all
this?
I can show you a
picture of me at age 5 looking under my dad's
Buick, trying to see how it works.
In High School I
was the only boy who some of the mothers would let
their daughters go to out-of-town ball games
with. I worked hard to keep that reputation, and
I always had a car full of good lookin babes.
Never ever an accident, ever. Even to
today.
I graduated from
The Ohio State University, with a degree in
Marketing in preparation for the future. (GO
BUCKS!)
I graduated from
General Motors Institute in Flint Michigan, where
I sometimes worked on the production line at the
Buick plant, to prepare for the future. (Go
Bulldogs)
The
U S Army made me an Electronics Instructor for 2
years, and finally Buick Division of GM made
me their Factory Man for NY City.
Many times I had to go to various GM plants to get quality problems fixed as quickly as possible
And finally I got
my life long dream of being a small-town Buick
dealer.
I'm still part of a weekly conference call with the biggest and best of the Buick dealerships nationwide, still pursuing reliability and quality control concerns on the cars being built today. Having a hand in contributing to Buick's reliability and quality control reputation is more than satisfying. It's a way of life. At assembly plants (like Fairfax), the quicker we fix potential problems, the better. Helping to keep little problems from becoming big ones is what we do.
So the next time
you see a new Buick, think of all that went into
it, and all of the dedicated people who spend
their life making it a great car.
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