“I’ve been working at Ford Rouge Factory longer then Mr. Henry Ford himself!” proudly announces Hank Sawer, who is guiding us through the factory at Dearborn, Michigan today. Since his very first day at the factory in 1973 our hero had managed to work at the most of 250 stages of a famous Ford-conveyer. Now he is retired, but still here as a guide on a green-roof station of our tour. Yes-yes! You’ve read it right! This factory looks just like an Emerald city – walls with a climbing up green screen, roofs are covered with a sedum grass. The last one grows on 4 special layers, all year around letting the insides of the buildings stay 10 degrees cooler at summer and same 10 degrees warmer in winter. Plus this kind of cover preserves the roof itself and it lasts instead of regular 20 years, for long, good 45. There are also a number of solar panels which do safe about 12% of energy placed all around the factory. This is how a modern and trendy eco-wave in the World affects the production here.
Hank is on the list of about 2000 workers, who are involved with Ford Rouge Factory nowadays in 2012. It is a dramatic difference compare to the year 1930 when that list have had 100 000 names in it. Why that much of a change? They say one of the reasons was a grown fear of a bomb attack from USSR in 1950-s. Which means having all the major country manufactures at one place (as Ford built it) wasn’t a good idea anymore. Now many parts of a car production process are spread out, also big parts of it are giving away for outsourcing companies. For example Russian “Severstal” company just had bought the steel plant eight years ago and now sells the metal to make Ford vehicles.
Next tour station for us was Ford Theater. Where we’ve got to see how Rouge Factory got created, how it gave well paid jobs, how it struggled through the years of Great Depression, how because of the WWII the focus moved from civil cars to the military ones, how with Ford’s goal “to make a reliable car that everyone can afford” Americans had changed their life style completely and forever. We’ve also gotten our portion of shaking, twisting, jaw-dropping and eye-widening at 5D movie, where our introduction to a fascinating process of a car birth has started.
The most exciting station was at the factory itself, where walking behind glass balconies we’ve seen a good portion conveyer “snack” for tracks F-150 of year 2012 and 2013. The walk is very well guided in many different ways: fun-facts, info-boards, video-clips, real guide-guys and even security ready to take to the best view-points! And there are things to view! Starting from power assisted lift for heavy instrument panel installation to windshield perfect placing by two beloved robots - Blinker and Bumper. And even there is lots of mechanical power involved into the process, conveyer is still run mostly by humans. There are two ten-hour shifts (6am - 4.30pm, 5.30pm - 3.00am). As you see the plant works almost non-stop and if in the beginning it took 12 hours to make one single car, in our days those two shifts already have 1200 cars being assembled!
Having whole day spent in Ford buildings we left it with sparkles in our eyes. It is a wonderful feeling when you get in touch with something so big and so perfectly working in the same time. Now getting in your car you can’t help but think how many people had paid attention to it, how many hands carefully groomed and installed every detail here. And you get a feeling that is sometimes pretty amazing to be a part of society, get a feeling that together people can do a lot of things that matter and matter good.
So press your pedal to the metal and have yourself a bit of a road trip!