The Way We Were

Mickey Kaus digs up an NYT article ($ needed for full access) from 1981 comparing the manufacturing of Ford Escorts at plants in Germany and at Halewood on Merseyside. It is, as you might expect, exceedingly grisly stuff:

This [German] plant produces some 1,200 cars a day, more than the 1,015 that Ford planners had anticipated, and requires 7,762 workers. Its counterpart at Halewood, with virtually identical equipment and production targets, has averaged only about 800 cars a day this year, and 10,040 workers have been needed to achieve even that production level.

 ''Our standards say it should take something like 20 man-hours of labor in both the body and assembly plants to make an Escort,'' said Bill Hayden, vice president of manufacturing for Ford Europe Inc., in an interview. ''At Saarlouis, they do it with 21 hours. At Halewood it takes 40 hours.'' ...

Aside from statistics, subjective differences between the two factories become evident. Halewood seems to overflow with workers - some of them reading or eating, others kicking a soccer ball - while Saarlouis seems almost depopulated and nearly every worker in evidence is hard at his job. At Saarlouis, workers dash to open doors for visitors touring in electric carts, while at Halewood, one worker greeted a news photographer by exposing himself....

For their part, the workers at Halewood maintained in recent interviews that shop conditions at Saarlouis were unsafe. ''If that was in England, I'd stop the job immediately,'' said Stephen Broadhead, the ''convenor'' at the body plant, who has visited the German plant twice. ''It was such a violation of our health and safety regulations we couldn't live with it.'' Nonetheless, the Saarlouis plant has the lowest injury record in Ford's entire Europe subsidiary...

Such differences are found to pervade the two plants. In May, the workers at Halewood went on strike for 11 days because they contended that four men could not produce 60.2 transaxle assemblies an hour, as the company and the German experience suggested they could. Five months later, the four men are still assembling about 55 an hour. ...

Granted, this was a Liverpudlian factory but it's still a fine example of the way we were: Basket-Case Britain. Times have changed and largely for the better - even if Nissan has just announced job losses at its Sunderland plant.. Admittedly, a cynic might say that we solved some of these problems by essentially getting rid of our manufacturing sector. But something had to be done...

Comments

[ndm]

I remember reading a story a good few years ago about an MIT study comparing the efficiency of car factories in different countries.

The most efficient car factory was a Japanese factory in Japan which made a car in 12 hours. Next was a Japanese factory in the USA which made a car in 13 hours - the same time it took Toyota to make a Lexus in Japan. A US factory in the USA took about 15 hours to make a car. The investigators reported their shock that an unnamed German luxury car maker took 30 hours to make a car to its fabled high quality - including 10 hours of rework. In other words, this company spent almost as much time fixing its cars before they left the factory as Toyota spent making cars to the same quality level. The study had barely hit the street before BMW said it was not them.

[ndm]

Alex Massie writes:

Admittedly, a cynic might say that we solved some of these problems by essentially getting rid of our manufacturing sector. But something had to be done...

Now that we appear to have got rid of the financial services sector as well I wonder what we'll do next. (With all these posts about cockerells and lost sheep Alex Massie might be preparing the ground for an agroturismo blog.)

[ally]

I worked for Ford many moons ago. My favourite Halewood moment happened on the launch of the Escort Cosworth, a 240hp, four-wheel drive rocketship which even the most junior levels of management were entitled to have for around £100 a month including insurance and servicing. The only problem was that Liverpool (i.e. Halewood) had something of a reputation for car theft, so the conversation with the company insurers went like this:

Ford: ...and we'd like to cover x, who lives in Liverpool, for this Escort Cosworth

Insurer: errr, no

Ford: look, we know it'll be expensive, but it's an employee offer so we've got to do it

Insurer: sorry, we just won't cover it

Ford: hang on a minute - we insure thousands of cars with you every year for our employees. There won't be that many of these so just give us a one-off cost

Insurer: hmph. OK - £22k a year.

Ford: eh? The car's only worth £20k.

Insurer: Yup. That'll cover our costs when it gets nicked.

So in their statistical model, it was a CERTAINTY to be nicked within a year in Liverpool. Quality.

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For their part, the workers at Halewood maintained in recent interviews that shop conditions at Saarlouis were unsafe. ''If that was in England, I'd stop the job immediately,'' said Stephen Broadhead, the ''convenor'' at the body plant, who has visited the German plant twice. ''It was such a violation of our health and safety regulations we couldn't live with it.'' Nonetheless, the Saarlouis plant has the lowest injury record in Ford's entire Europe subsidiary...

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