On Wednesday morning, Roger Stephens brought up and interesting question about the St. Louis plant. He asked "how many Corvettes would normally be in actual production, or in the building, at any given time during a work day". I replied that it was an interesting question and that I would try to come up with a figure in a day or two. I've since decided that there's likely no way I will ever be able to come up with an accurate figure. I've been looking at paperwork and the plant blueprint for three days and still have no actual numbers.
First of all, we have to decide when a "Corvette" actually becomes a Corvette. If we assume that point is when the body is installed on the chassis, or when the engine first comes to life, it would be a bit easier to calculate the total. However, I decided to include all of the units, even though they were just sub assy's. The most logical way to come up with a total would be to begin the count with the body line since it's the longest line of all the sub assemblies (slightly over 1/4 mile) and requires the most time for the build. So the count begins the minute a floor pan is placed on a body truck. Since the body line is one continuous winding loop that ends/starts at the same spot, it would have been easy to calculate the number of bodies on that line. However, the body gring booth and paint operation booths completely destroy any chance of an accurate count as this is the only point in the journey that the body trucks are not equally spaced. The number of bodies in production, minus the body grind and paint booths would be just about exactly 73. We can probably add roughly 15 to this total for bodies in paint booths.
Next comes the chassis line, counting from the point of body drop and beyond. There are exactly 12 jobs on that line.
The next two possible lines are the two that have jobs the need paint touch up and those that don't. (most did) There could have been as many as 16 jobs on either of these lines.
Last big one is the "final trim line" that was 380' long and ran across the rear of the bldg. There were 19 jobs on that line at the end of production in 82. (18 in 64)
These numbers do not include any of the many individual stations such as water test, brake test and front end align etc etc. Add aprox 10 for these stations.
The "repair area" had 21 machanic stalls and at least half were usually filled.
If we count all but the mechanical repair area jobs, we come up with somewhere around 135 Corvettes for a total. (hope I have all the math right) That's a lot of cars for a building that was only roughly 400'X 600'.
First of all, we have to decide when a "Corvette" actually becomes a Corvette. If we assume that point is when the body is installed on the chassis, or when the engine first comes to life, it would be a bit easier to calculate the total. However, I decided to include all of the units, even though they were just sub assy's. The most logical way to come up with a total would be to begin the count with the body line since it's the longest line of all the sub assemblies (slightly over 1/4 mile) and requires the most time for the build. So the count begins the minute a floor pan is placed on a body truck. Since the body line is one continuous winding loop that ends/starts at the same spot, it would have been easy to calculate the number of bodies on that line. However, the body gring booth and paint operation booths completely destroy any chance of an accurate count as this is the only point in the journey that the body trucks are not equally spaced. The number of bodies in production, minus the body grind and paint booths would be just about exactly 73. We can probably add roughly 15 to this total for bodies in paint booths.
Next comes the chassis line, counting from the point of body drop and beyond. There are exactly 12 jobs on that line.
The next two possible lines are the two that have jobs the need paint touch up and those that don't. (most did) There could have been as many as 16 jobs on either of these lines.
Last big one is the "final trim line" that was 380' long and ran across the rear of the bldg. There were 19 jobs on that line at the end of production in 82. (18 in 64)
These numbers do not include any of the many individual stations such as water test, brake test and front end align etc etc. Add aprox 10 for these stations.
The "repair area" had 21 machanic stalls and at least half were usually filled.
If we count all but the mechanical repair area jobs, we come up with somewhere around 135 Corvettes for a total. (hope I have all the math right) That's a lot of cars for a building that was only roughly 400'X 600'.
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