"P-O-P" Q's

[Wayne M.]

With the introduction of the Protect-o-Plate for 1965 and subsequent model years, the data to be stamped is well described in the AIM. My question is what was the factory procedure for collecting / recording such info before stamping the plate ?

Was it part of final inspection, with someone writing down the engine, trans, rear axle, trim and paint codes (and dates, where applicable); ie. down in the "pit" and under the hood and glovebox ? Then, was this info transferred to the plate immediately thereafter, on the shop floor, or was there a form sent to the plant office, who made the plate, attached it to the warranty booklet, and sent a copy of the data to somewhere in the GM abyss to be referrenced in case of dealer repair work.

What was the divisional fate of this database ?

[John H.]

Re: "P-O-P" Q's

The "chassis" portion of the information (engine, trans, axle numbers and carb type, etc.) were hand-written by the Engine Dress Line Inspector on the Chassis Broadcast copy that was taped to the engine conveyor hook; he removed this copy and placed it in a tray at the end of the engine line. A runner came by every hour or two, picked up the Broadcasts, and took them to the Broadcast Booth near the end of the Final Line. The clerk in the booth typed that information into his Addressograph machine, which produced the P-O-P plate; he also manually typed the same numbers on copy #7 of the "Corvette Order" sheet, which went with the car to the dealer. The clerk applied the P-O-P to the warranty brochure, and placed it in the glove box along with copy #7 of the "Corvette Order" and the "Car Shipper", which was a multi-part form carbon copy of the window price sticker, and then applied the price sticker to the window glass. This same process generated the Dealer Invoice, which was mailed to the dealer when the car was shipped (turned over to the on-site haulaway carrier). The plant then transmitted the information to Chevrolet Central Office daily confirming build and shipment of each day's production, and trashed all the paper records generated during production, including all the Body and Chassis Broadcast copies that were printed at various stations all over the plant for every car that came down the line.

About 50-80 pieces of paper were generated internally for each car during production; in a typical high-volume plant, that amounted to 50,000 - 80,000 pieces of paper PER DAY of internal paperwork. You'd need a building the size of the Rose Bowl to store all that paper for one plant's annual production, and assembly plants have just enough office space to support production, not to store paper, so it all went into dumpsters daily. All the production records were kept at Chevrolet Central Office (remember, in those days computers were in their infancy and used IBM punch-cards and huge old disk packs); those are the records everyone wants, but no one has found.

[Art A.]

Re: "P-O-P" Q's

Yep, John is right----------"All the production records were kept at Chevrolet Central Office (remember, in those days computers were in their infancy and used IBM punch-cards and huge old disk packs); those are the records everyone wants, but no one has found."---------those were the records that Jim Perkins and Ralph Kramer put me on a special assignment to find and we did an in-depth search and concluded that they no longer existed WITHIN GM files.

Think of it this way---you have more power and probably more storage space in the computer that you are looking at than the ENTIRE computer department at Chevrolet Engineering/Central office which were big rooms full of computer hardware. Even if we were able to find the "mag tapes", with the elusive data, we were very concerned that we might not be able to retrieve the data as computers had advanced so fast that the old mag systems were long gone.

Art

[Wayne M.]

Thanks John and Art

John -- amazing detail on just how this POP data was harvested and transmitted; kinda thought you'd be the one to answer my questions.
Art -- thanks for the confirmation that your search for records did cover the POP data.

P.S. anyone heard any details / rumors about the "new and breaking information regarding Protect-o-Plates" that Al Grenning will be presenting at a Tech Session of the 2003 Hershey National Convention ?

[Art A.]

Re: Thanks John and Art

No Wayne, I haven't but I would be interested in hearing---even if it's via an e-mail.

Art

[Robert B.]

Re: Thanks John and Art

As a Field Engineer working for IBM at that time I can enlighten you a little bit. The disks that you speak of were refered to as "disk packs" they were removable so they could be moved from one disk drive to another. This was the way to keep production going in the event of a disk drive failure. Just move the pack to another drive, reassign the address of the output drive and keep on going. The "disk packs" were expensive so when the data was no longer needed the packs were reformatted and reused and you know what happens to data when disks are reformatted. With the cost per byte so cheep, the reliability much higher and the redundent storage capability it is no longer necessary to have removable "disk packs".This is only one reason why the data in no longer available...

Bob Brockett
62-300

[Art A.]

Re: Thanks John and Art

Bob, GM stored thousands of these "disk packs" in a storage facility in Boyers Pennsylvania for what they termed "vital record" storage. "Vital records" storage was created for utilization in the event of a disaster ( mostly fire) at any one of its facilities so production or engineering could get back on line as fast as possible. In the case of the disc packs, after about the early to mid 70's, it became a mute point as the hardware to run these disc packs was on its way out. In the mid 90's it was decided to terminate it's vital record storage lease and had all of this data destroyed---after a corporate review, which I participated in.
Since this was mostly production, i.e., data to keep the production up and running----not vehicle data, and engineering data, i.e., data to keep the supplier, drafting and the rest of the critical items required to keep the pipeline full, it really didn't matter much to the "Corvette restoration world" as this data did not contain much, if any, individual vehicle data.

Art