Weekly Recap: GM plans massive new paint shop at Chevy Corvette factory

Weekly Recap: GM plans massive new paint shop at Chevy Corvette factoryPlus: Notes On Takata, Mazda, And Motorcycle FatalitiesImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsImage Credit: Drew PhillipsMore PhotosJeff Gordon and Chevrolet Corvette Z06 pace car at Indy2015 Callaway Corvette Z062015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06: First Drive2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Shipping2015 Chevy Corvette Z06 order guide2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 power graphicsGreg Migliore

General Motors is laying out some serious green to maintain the Chevy Corvette's expansive color palette.

The automaker is breaking ground on a new paint shop this summer that's part of a $439-million investment to upgrade the 34-year-old Bowling Green, KY, factory that builds the Stingray. The massive new structure will total 450,000 square feet, nearly half the size of the current 1-million square-foot facility. Construction is expected to take two years and won't impact Corvette production.

The upgrades include new robots that save paint and create a better finish, longer, more efficient ovens to bake in the finish, and LED lighting. There's also a dry scrubbing booth technology with a limestone handling system that eliminates waste.

GM has invested $135 million in the factory in last four years for the changeover to build the C7 and to relocate its Performance Build Center to Bowling Green. The improvements continue to modernize the Kentucky factory, which has become a tourist attraction in its own right, as more than 56,000 enthusiasts visited it last year. The upgrades are part of a $5.4-billion investment GM confirmed in April that will remake its US footprint in the next three years.

The Bowling Green expansion underscores GM's continued commitment to the Corvette, which sold nearly 38,000 copies around the world last year, an eight-year high. "With this major technology investment, we can continue to exceed the expectations of sports car buyers for years to come," North American manufacturing manager Arvin Jones said in a statement.
OTHER NEWS & NOTES

Takata recall hits 34 million vehicles

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expanded the Takata airbag recall to an almost unthinkable 34 million vehicles on Tuesday. The recall is part of an agreement reached by the two sides where Takata admitted some of its airbag inflators have a defect, and the deal compels the company to comply with all future regulatory actions and investigations. Takata's airbag inflators were produced with "a propellant that can degrade over time" and lead to ruptures, NHTSA said. Six deaths have been attributed to the flaw worldwide. Investigations conducted by Takata, automakers, and others have not determined the exact cause of the inflator problem, but NHTSA said moisture appears to alter the propellant's chemical structure. It then ignites too rapidly, creates too much pressure that ruptures the inflator, and blasts shards of metal at passengers. For more information on the Takata case and other recalls, click here.

Mazda launches 'Driving Matters' campaign

It's been a big week for Mazda, the Miata, and Autoblog, and Mazda capped it Friday with the launch of a new campaign called Driving Matters. The advertising highlights the "emotional connection" of driving Mazdas, and it is an evolution of the company's Game Changers campaign. The long-running Zoom-Zoom tagline "will absolutely still be there," spokesman Nick Beard said, and it appears at the end of the campaign's first spot. Mazda has used Zoom-Zoom since 2000.

Motorcycle fatalities projected to fall

Motorcycle fatalities are projected to drop for the second year in a row, the Governors Highway Safety Association said Wednesday. Fatalities fell 1.8 percent in 2014 to 4,584, according to early data from the first nine months of last year. Motorcycle deaths decreased in 27 states, increased in 19, and were flat in four states and the District of Columbia.

Despite the potential progress, the GHSA urges caution, noting that motorcycle deaths are 26 percent higher than a decade ago. That's the opposite of vehicle deaths, which have fallen 28 percent. The decline in motorcyclist deaths has more to do with weather patterns than an increase in safety, the association said. "The risk factors that are associated with it [motorcycling] aren't really changing," spokesperson Kara Macek said.

Meanwhile, NHTSA also proposed plans this week to crackdown on so-called novelty helmets that do not meet Transportation Department standards. The proposal would beef up existing regulations and help law enforcement officials identify non-conforming helmets. "Wearing a helmet that meets DOT standards can literally mean the difference between life and death," NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind said in a statement. "Our proposal ensures that when motorcyclists put on a helmet it offers that life-saving protection."

Related Video:

#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-38325{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-38325, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-38325{width:100%;display:block;}Featured Gallery2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06: Review

Read more »

Sponsored: How the World’s Largest Truck Factory Was Completely Overhauled in 8 Weeks

Sponsored: How the World’s Largest Truck Factory Was Completely Overhauled in 8 Weeks | Car and Driver Blog --> News > The Code > Sponsored: How the World’s Largest Truck Factory Was Completely Overhauled in 8 Weeks SHARE TWEET SPONSORED Sponsored: How the World’s Largest Truck Factory Was Completely Overhauled in 8 Weeks

Ford tore down and retooled the legendary Rouge Factory to make way for the aluminum alloy 2015 F-150

Just after midnight on August 23, 2014, the Dearborn Truck Plant, on the site of Henry Ford’s legendary Rouge factory, went offline to begin the largest transformation of any manufacturing facility in the company’s history. Ford’s decision to change the body of the F-150 — the company’s most valuable and iconic vehicle — from steel to aluminum alloy was a four-year process that involved no shortage of nail chewing, because to pull it off required, essentially, building an entirely new factory where a perfectly good one was already standing. And to do that, Ford had to actually stop production of the truck in Dearborn.

Every day that the Rouge was closed translated into millions in lost profits, so the changeover needed to happen as quickly as possible. Ford management settled on eight weeks. That’s how much time, Bruce Hettle, Vice President, North America Manufacturing, and his logistics team would have to strip out hundreds of tons of machinery, install an entire new line of assembly equipment that included 500 custom robots, implement a closed-loop aluminum recycling system, and build a new stamping plant. Actually, Hettle says, only four of those weeks were allotted to the tear down and build-up. He needed the rest of the time to test the gear, build some prototypes, and prepare to re-launch the Dearborn Truck Plant at full-production of the all-new, aluminum-bodied 2015 F-150 by November 1, 2014.

“We planned it literally down to the minute, with micro-micro precision,” Hettle says. Two minutes after the last 2014 truck rolled off the line on August 24, skilled workers who’d been positioned nearby on the floor began unbolting equipment to be carted out. It took only five days to prep the site, to remove thousands of tons of metal manufacturing gear (much of it be repurposed at other factories), but in some cases, new installation began within minutes of an area being cleared. “It was very synchronous,” Hettle says.

To build out the new line, the logistics team stationed 1,100 semi tractors filled with equipment around southeastern Michigan, and as soon as the factory was stripped bare, those trucks rolled out for Dearborn. The first 300 trailers were actually parked around the vast Rouge property, but once those were unloaded, the other 800 were dispatched, one after another, timed just right as to avoid back-ups entirely.

What’s more, Ford anticipated that a sudden influx of trucks and heavy machinery around Dearborn — on Labor Day weekend, no less — could snarl traffic, so the company worked with Michigan’s Department of Transportation to plan routes, set schedules, and even in some cases add traffic lights where problems could occur. To track the armada of trucks, RFID tags were attached to each so that Hettle and his team in the command center had a real-time picture of where every vehicle was, at every moment, so that problems could be identified quickly and solved efficiently. Time lost was time that Ford wasn’t building F-150s, Hettle says. “It was all about time to market.”

The all new aluminum alloy F-150 body mid assembly

And in the end, the plan worked perfectly. Within weeks, Ford was building prototypes of the new truck and on November 11, the Dearborn Truck Plant was officially reopened. Every day since, more than 1,400 F-150s have rolled off its line, at a rate of 60-per-hour. “It’s a milestone we will always talk about, making the decision to transform the truck to aluminum, and to remake the Rouge,” Hettle says. Not that his work was done. Six months later, Ford repeated the process in Kansas City, at the country’s other facility where F-150s are built. As of May 1, 2015 both plants are back up and running at full capacity, shipping trucks to dealers worldwide.

“It’s a real source of pride for us,” Hettle says. “I’ve been involved in a lot of launches, but this clearly was the largest product transformation that we’ve ever taken on as a company.” In the process, Ford learned how to refit a giant factory, modernize in a short time, and mass produce using aluminum. “We’ve demonstrated our speed to market, and our speed of transformation in manufacturing,” Hettle says. “To do this to an industry standard, in record time, is really a leap forward.”

facebook twitter you-tube rss REVIEWS First Drives Instrumented Tests Comparison Tests Long-Term Road Tests Specialty Files From the Review Vault NEWS Spy Photos Auto Shows Blog FEATURES Hybrid Cars Electric Cars Columns Tech Department Gearbox 10Best Shopping Advice Video BUYER'S GUIDE 2015 Editors' Choice Ford F-150 Jeep Wrangler Ford Escape Honda Accord Jeep Grand Cherokee ABOUT CAR AND
DRIVER Subscribe Mobile User Sitemap Contact Us Subscriptions/
Customer Service Website Feedback FOLLOW US Backfires RSS Facebook Twitter YouTube © 2015 Hearst Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved., Privacy Policy | Your California Privacy Rights | Terms of Use

Read more »