I have owned a Ford Explorer for almost 7 years now. It is a car that I love. Very few problems and a ton of memories!
Our last day of plant trek was visiting the Ford Rouge Factory, the original production facility that was the vision and creation of Henry Ford himself. At it's peak, the facility was 1 mile long and 3/4 mile wide with 100,000 workers who turned raw materials such as iron ore into cars all on site. It was a completely vertically integrated facility that churned out cars.
The facility continues to build vehicles, but it's not quite as vertically integrated as it used to be. Here are a few picture from the visitor center balcony. The pictures show the view of the plant from left to right. In the first picture, the smoke stacks in the very back are from the steel factory that used to be part of the Ford Rouge site.
The plant that we toured performed the final assembly for the Ford F150 pickup truck. The facility is fairly new with plenty of "green tech" integrated into the building. Some of the green highlights included the green roof (the roof was entirely planted with a mossy/grass), the parking lot was made of a porous material that allowed water to run through it, and the overall electricity efficiencies of the plant.
The Ford plant looked very similar to the GM plant, however there were some significant differences such as the overall layout and subtle points of their operation. As a whole, it seemed as though safety was a bigger focus at Ford.
After a fantastic tour, we piled on the bus one last time as a class and headed back to the hotel. Plant trek was over.
Most of the class gathered at Ruby Tuesday's right next to the hotel for our Last Supper. We then headed to the local bowling ally/gaming facility for one last night of fun. Pictures to come.
