Autoblog BG plant

[FU]

FWIW....
http://i.autoblog.com/2011/04/04lan/...orvette-but-w/

GM is probably holding out for more $$.

[tomtom72]

Just my thoughts.....in Dave's book he devotes a chapter to the BG plant, it's design and the reason for it's design. In brief, my take away from Dave's book is that GM allowed the car's engineers to design the production facility from zero for the first time. GM ( if I remember right ) sent Dave to MIT where he received a PhD in Industrial Design just so he and the corvette team could set this plant up to maximize it's potential to do more than one product. I know that sounds like "so what" today, but at the time it was a bit of a new idea. Dave's aim in the design of BG was to have a plant that could do low volume, <100k units, specialty stuff.....like the vette, XLR, Sky, & camaro on the same line and make it economical also. He figured it would give GM more latitude to come up with low volume but cool niche cars & not loose the profit to the process. When BG first opened it had a capacity of 60k units, and that was before the advances that are in use today.

I'll admit that the structure is old. I don't know how long Chrysler was there before GM bought it from them. It does get to be a real pia to keep old buildings running right after a long while in service. I would guess if the infrastructure is in need of some serious investment it could be more practical to start from scratch with the building. I'd like to sit down with the Physical Plant Dept & talk shop just so I could pick their brains.