video from July 1991 with some of the people responsible for building the 1992 Bonneville describing how quality and safety is built right in to the new Bonneville at the Wentzville Assembly Center. Herb Stone (plant manager): the quality of the Bonneville I think will be recognized worldwide as being one of the finest cars that General Motors or Pontiac has introduced. Dave Mitchell (program manager): the quality actually starts with the parts coming from the supplier. Each department knows what they have to do to make this a top quality car. Pat Stevens (materials manager): The quality starts a long time before the parts arrive in the assembly plant. It starts with the way the part is designed. Muriel Finken (engineering manager): Because one of the things that we have to do as engineers is to give input to design staff to ensure that the car that they are designing is a buildable car. John Austin (pilot coordinator, bodyshop): and you don’t repair quality, you build quality. Dave Mitchell: And starting with the body shop our number one controls are really the fits of all the major body panels. John Austin: Well if the quality isn’t there we stop the line to get the quality there on our fits and finishes on our doors and door openings and it’s very important to us because when you put your doors on the car you’ve got your closing efforts for the customer and how your trim fits and so we had to stop the line to make sure that the quality is there on the doors because that’s where your front fenders line up and then your hood and they affect the whole quality of the car. Herb Stone: In the area of quality of course the major thrust has been in paint finish and in fits because that’s what our customer has said. Skip Mann (gun technician, paintshop): we believe we have the best paint job mainly because the car is handled with kid gloves all the way across the shop from the time it leaves body shop till it goes to first set of phosphate rinse to ELPO (Electro Coat Paint Operation) and it’s detail sanded, sealer applications, we go thru primer applications and those are detail sanded prior to a base coat application. The base coat is applied with hand sprayers that monitor the cars. The exterior of the car is applied with automatic equipment which are dialed in and they are good equipment, we put 2 mills of clear over the car to protect it from the UV’s. Just an outstanding paint job overall. Chris Vasquez (planning coordinator, trim line): We realize in this plant that the customer demands a world class quality automobile and I really believe from the bottom of my heart that the only way to get world class quality is to get every person in the building involved in achieving quality. The whole attitude of this work force is changing because of this Pontiac. Herb Stone: If I was a salesman what I would focus on with the customer is that the Wentzville organization has developed a very strong commitment to quality. I would talk about the robotics, the single point tooling that’s been developed for this car in the body shop. John Austin: And when you stamp one and you get it right and you stamp 250,000 and they’re all the same so when you build your first car to you build your last car you’ll have the same quality on every one. Joe Langenhurst (sealer analyst): The customer benefits from our sealing a car properly by making sure that we don’t have any wind noise, we don’t have any water leaks in the passenger compartment and also in the rear compartment. Herb Stone: So we’re very confident that this car will come off the very highest quality, meeting anything in the world. One of the things of course safety is becoming a very paramount issue with our customers. Muriel Finken: But we also try to prevent accidents by providing the ABS brake system and improving the steering and the handling and tire performance of our cars. The door beams are very critical on a side impact because you don’t have the space and the luxury of a front end or rear end to absorb that energy. So you have to make your doors very stiff and very strong to take up that energy rather than moving it again into the passenger compartment area. We try to provide an impact friendly interior on the car. We try to provide the passenger compartment area is kind of a box to protect people. We don’t want any sharp points in there in case there is any movement around inside the car. Herb Stone: And Pontiac has really developed a ride and handling package that is responsive to the kind of customers that they’ll have.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:36:27 +0000
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