October 25, 2012 (Thursday)
I recently watched an episode of “How It’s Made,” a television series. The episode I saw was about how cars are made. Having worked in an automobile factory, I was interested in seeing how things may have changed in the assembly process. Keeping in mind that my experience in the plant took place 57 years ago, it was to be expected that changes have taken place. I don’t think I was prepared, however, to see how much the assembly process has changed.
The main difference, it seems to me, is the use of robots in the process, and also the basic construction of nearly everything in a modern car. I used to visit the body construction line, and there were men there with power tools and electrodes, positioning and welding together automobile bodies. According to the “How It’s Made” show that I saw, there are no men in that part of the assembly plant. Robots have replaced them. I once felt sorry for the guys who painted, knowing that they must be breathing in dangerous amounts despite protective measures, but the robots do it for them today.
Robots never get tired,and they are programmed to be 100% accurate and precise in positioning parts and spot welding them. They also make possible the creation of huge sections of the automobile that used to be shipped in after being made in other factories elsewhere. If the situation calls for it, robots can work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Non-stop.
The robots must be programmed, therefore the computers are absolute necessities. They are used wherever possible, ruling out as much as possible the chance of human error.
It still takes a lot of people to run an automobile assembly plant, but many of the jobs they perform have changed. We’ve come a long way from the early assembly lines where each crew pushed the car to the next station for another crew to do their part. It’s all automatic today.
“They don’t make them like they used to,” is a common phrase that usually means the product has become inferior. Perhaps some parts of today’s cars are not as good as the old ones, but for the most part, today’s automobiles seem to be much more reliable and last longer than the cars of yesteryear. People once expected 100,000 miles from a car; nowadays a car with those miles on it is just broken in.