Touring the GM plant

I have never been a serious car enthusiast, which is rather strange for someone who interns at GM, though I must say that my interest in cars has risen like the oil prices these past couple months.

One of the more intriguing I-want-to-learn-about-cars experiences was visiting the GM car plant in Rayong, an industrial facility about 2 hours away from Bangkok. Seeing the cars being put together, stamped, assembled and checked piqued my interest.

At my boss's suggestion, I scheduled a tour with the the local plant manager. The plant manager, who spoke decent English, equipped me with goggles, a hard hat and work shoes before taking me to the first assembly building. The first assemply building was gigantic. It was the size of several football fields, with the ceiling at least 50 feet high. Although I work for GM, I had this mental image of poor working conditions in the plant. I was surprised to see all the workers in with full safety equipment: goggles, full body suits, and face masks. I saw some workers wield huge mechanical arms suspended from the ceiling to weld together two sheets of metal. Each work area had gigantic industrial fans to keep the workers cool and small soda and fruit juice machines around the plant.

After seeing fork lifts zoom by and avoiding flying sparks, we went to the stamping machine. Having no idea what a stamping machine was, I eagerly followed my guide as we walked to the other side of the building. As we approached, I heard thunderous "THUD" sounds increase in intensity. The factory manager showed me huge stacks of metal sheets. These, he said pointing to one stack, are car hoods for the AVEO (a GM model sold in Thailand). The stamping machine, he explained to me, has a mold for every piecew of metal. Using two thousand tonnes of weight, the machine literally stamps the piece of flat sheet metal into the desired shape. As we turned the corner I saw the stamping machine. The machine had at least six different parts. During the first step, robotic arms use air-compressed suction cups to grap a piece of metal inside the machine. I next, the metal is cleaned from dirt and other impurities. Finally, I see other robotic arms place the sheet of metal into the stamping machine. Another set of robotic arms sucks the sheet and places it to another stamping machine. In all there are five different stamping machines: some create the shape, while others modify, correct, punch holes and make other adjustments before each piece of metal is well molded. I was quite impressed.

The final warehouse of construction was for assembly of the cars. As we walked in, we saw an assembly line of cars slowly being pulled forward at about 1 foot per minute. As the cars slowly moved forward, scores of workers climbed into the cars, inserting eletrical wires, putting on the tires, and inserting the seats, stero, lights and other accessories. During this process motors imported form Japan are inserted into the cars. The final portion is akin to a car wash; employees drive the completed cars into a car wash where they are drenched for three minutes. If the car is duely waterproof then it finishes inspection. If not, then the changes are made in factory before it is exported.

I used to wonder why there are relatively few car makers in the world. As I suspected before, creating cars is a very, very complicated business. Simply put, there aren't that many companies that have the capital or skills required to assemble automobiles.