Automotive Productivity: Plant Architecture

Mike Smitka
GERPISA Steering Committee
Judge, Automotive News PACE Awards
Prof Emeritus of Economics, W&L

This is the first little bit of an article on factory architecture, why it changed and its implications for the industry

I've both enjoyed and leared a lot from the substack articles at Contruction Physics. I've started thinking about how I would approach the same general set of topics for automotive. Starting on the construction end of things, early factories were fairly compact, because the use of steam power required locating things as close as possible to the power plant. The first factory I worked in was huge in length, to the point that bicycles were still used, but it was also built in 6 floors. If you look closely at the Diego Rivera Detroit Industry Murals, based on Rivera's first-hand observations in 1932 of Ford's Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, you still see belts in use. Electric drive motors were pervasive by that time – Henry Ford worked at Detroit Edison prior to launching his first of three successive automotive startups in 1903. The transition, however, took decades.

Ford's operations when he started building the Model T were on the top 2 floors of a small building in what is today the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, a half mile north of the Rivera Murals at the DIA. It was an open hall with a series of work stands. At that time Ford relied on craft techniques, carting components made by outside suppliers up a freight elevator to be assembled by experienced fitters into a vehicle. A railroad spur ran up to the back of the building, essential for bringing in bulky and heavy engine castings and frames.
Now a museum, it makes a wonderful venue for receptions – we held the closing "gala" of the June 2022 GERPISA conference there, surrounded by Model T versions and "upfits" into pickup trucks, snowcats and so on.

Ford's first purpose-built factory, a few miles away in Highland Park, didn't come until 1910. It was a multi-story operation, but unlike Piquette was full of machinery, and from 1912-3, a moving assembly line.