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Automotive Industry

AM General shows automation isn't everything

Automotive Design & Production, June, 2003 by Kermit Whitfield

The most striking thing about the new Hummer H2 plant (Mishawaka, NJ is its lack of automation: walk into the weld department and you will see dozens of workers manually spot welding Frame panels. In Fact, Hummer utilizes over 200 manual weld guns to complete about 60% of all of the welds on the H2. AM General, which makes all Hummers, and its partner GM, which designed the H2, decided to go with the heavily manual arrangement in the weld shop largely to gain maximum flexibility.

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Rick Smith, AM General's vice-president, H2 Operations and Special Projects, says, "For the H2, we were designing the tooling and the plant at the same time as the model was being developed, so we had to have the ability to respond quickly to changes." Also, since the annual plant capacity is only 40,000 units, heavy investment in automation is hardly justified. Still, the plan From the beginning was to add more robots once production stabilized and new models came on line, and that time is at hand.

The plant began pre-production of the SUT version of the H2 in late April. It will follow the H2 SUT concept shown in 2001 with a truncated cargo box and mid-gate system. Its addition will effectively double the number of robots in its weld shop [it has 25 and will add 24 more], which will bring the percentage of robot welds From 40% to 60%. The expanded automation might reduce flexibility somewhat, but it is likely to add to overall weld precision. However, that is not a big concern For Smith. He says that the precision of the manual welders has Far exceeded expectations, especially those of the Folks at GM. This From workers whose automotive experience he characterizes this way: "The closest many of them came to an auto plant before we hired them was driving by one." He adds, "You'd be surprised how many people From GM we have coming through here to see how we do it."

Automotive Industry

AM General shows automation isn't everything

Automotive Design & Production, June, 2003 by Kermit Whitfield

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