GGDR
Member Since: 26 Nov 2016
Location: London
Posts: 3545
 
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So as above, just got back to base from Solihull. F A N T A S T I C mind blowing day on many levels....! 
I'll break this down into three sections...
1. Factory Tour of the 405, 405 LWB and 494 assembly process
2. Range Rover Museum within the factory
3. Off road driving experience.
SECTION 1: FACTORY TOUR
Love this roadsign on the A-can't remember nearby. Really close to the control tower end of Birmingham Airport.
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You pull into the factory gate, show some ID and you're in the Range Rover / Land Rover candyshop. There's brand new, plastic-on-the-bonnet everythings, Discoveries, Range Rovers, SVRs RR Sports, being driven left and right and everywhere, and being driven from the left side and the right side (LHD and RHD); 80% of these will leave the country. Car transporters also fly in and our, as will as supply HGVs.
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You follow the signs within the site, eventually pull in and you're greeted by this guy:
Made at the LR South Africa assembly plant, they have three of these. You've got your 90s and your 110, these have a 147inch wheelbase and the extra set or doors as you can see. Built for safaris, they were a cancelled order and brought back to the UK specially for use ferrying people about the site. They are not road registered and are speed limited at 20mph. I sat in the third rear door, a bit cramped in that row but super cool.
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You check in and the lovely staff give you a coffee, a briefing, a lanyard and a high-vis jacket. Oh and a headset radio for the live commentary around the noisy factory.
Coffee and briefing done and we're off. All three of us in a 12-seat Defender!
So one of the big rules was no photos  unless he says ok. So bear with me, I took as many as I dared. He did say you can have your phone taken off you if you're caught.
So off we go and he says because it's only three of us we can go to the stamping building. Around we go dodging forklifts in the super-stretch Defender and eventually we see these stacks of 3mm aluminium plate piled up at one end. Amazing over the next few hours we'll see this raw sheet material turned into £90k, £100k even £150,000 vehicles.
This building was built on a base of around 8ft of rubber. They called it a seismic foundation. It's to minimise noise for the neighbours as the presses inside push 8600 tonnes of pressure on those sheets of aluminium. We saw them stamping an entire LWB 405 'side'. There's a 50t gantry crane overhead and they use that to change the dies. It was a truly gargantuan crane. It needs to be hefty because a die set (male and female) weighs 47 tonnes. There are actually 5 presses, the first for the basic shape then the next four pressing more and more detail, punching out holes and cutting away unneeded material with each pass.
It happens in the press 'room' - more of a factory within a factory - which has a strict no-human policy unless personnel leave their 'padlock' on a hook, a safety switch each person carries which prevents the machinery being started until they exit again. They also maintain a very clean environment in there using positive air pressure to keep out bits, for very good reason. What kind of bits?
Well with all that pressure stamping out bonnets, doors etc, you don't want anything in there other than the machines and the sheet of aluminium. But... one day a fly got in. Freddie they called him.
For some reason that only Freddie knows, he flew between the dies and his timing was impeccably bad because when the dies came together he met a with rather swift, 8600 tonne end. But not without leaving his mark. You see they keep it so clean in there because under so much pressure, when the dies come together, there is only room for a 3mm sheet of aluminium. And nothing more. They don't like dust in there let alone a fly. There's nowhere for the pressure to go and Freddie was forever impressed into a 405 bonnet:
But it wasn't just the bonnet, the aluminium took only part of the load - the pressure still had to go somewhere else and the £1 million pound die took a hit and was marked too. Not as badly as the bonnet but it had to be repaired. All because of one little fly. And Freddie becomes Unbelievable fact of the day No.1.
No photos were allowed, but the freddie pic was allowed because it was taken in a corridor.
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When they press enough different bits, they have enough to make a body. This was our next stop:
A cool exploded set-up of all the separate pressings.
And this particular body:
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So how do they stitch all those bits of aluminium together? Spot welds right?
Wrong, they are riveted, (and glued in places) which is a lot more accurate apparently.
Here are a couple of the rivets. They are self-piercing. The pieces are aligned and held together by robots, we saw them riveting a floorpan with sides and roof, the basic box structure and the riveting happens very quickly, but in a one-by-one rivet sequent, multiple riveting at once will create distortions.
Re distortions, we also saw a robot swarming over the body boxes (not even full body shells yet) and that was a QC robot taking 100's of photos. Yes quite literally it's Terminator (Skynet becomes self-aware) - a robot checking a robot and it checks dimensions, fit, tolerances to within microns. Wow. Sorry no photos allowed in this section.
They also have a 'no fault forward' system where any defective assemblies are removed from the line rather than left for the paint shop to correct later.
Unbelievable fact of the day No.2: the line is mixed car bodies, the machines deal with 494s 405s and LWB 405's - and a mix of these bodies were coming along the line. The robots know which body they're looking at and re-tool themselves automatically for whatever body comes past. And the line just keeps going.
The robots keep riveting parts together, and then the doors are fitted as the last step before going off to the paint shop.
No.3 unbelievable fact of the day: the chap pointed out that the doors weren't fitting properly, they were 3mm too high. That's intentional he says. Why? Because the final weight of the door with trimmings, glass, motors, speakers, wing mirrors is much higher than a bare door. All that extra weight causes it to literally slump but it's all worked out in advance and they know it's 3mm so that's why they set the height up 3mm too high. Wow.
We didn't get to see the paint shop, it's too clean an environment for us filthy humans. True.
The cars come along the line and are painted to order. So that means the paint-bots paint each one (which is a different shape) a different colour according to the colour assigned to that body/order. You'd think they'd batch the colours but no, that would slow things down too much. It's all about line speed. The robots can clean and change colour in 10 seconds.
Also, the undercoat is colour matched.
Red car? Red undercoat. Blue car? Blue undercoat.
Reason: this hides scratches better.
Next we went to the final assembly building. We saw the painted shells coming in a few levels higher up and eventually mating to the chassis. They call this the 'marriage'. I say chassis because the drivetrain, suspension, exhaust, everything you'd see if it were possible to take the body off your car, is all assembled on a chassis-type jig. These jigs are a cool concept because they hold everything in the correct position until the body 'marriage'. Incredibly the variables keep piling up and each station this jig passes through introduces more and more combinations of options but each car incredibly gets the right engine, anti-roll bar, exhaust, switch - whatever the correct part is at it's given station.
And - incredibly - these parts are just magically at their respective stations. Which brings me to Unbelievable fact of the day No.4: these parts came off a lorry within the last four hours. Every part. It's called 'just in time' production and most factories run this way these days, not just JLR. It's a magical supply chain that lands the right part, be it an engine, a seat, wheels any part of the car - at the right time, at the right station. Wow. Wow. Wow.
They assemble your regular gas guzzlers and also PHEV's all on this same line. The host chap asked us to wide berth the rack of PHEV batteries, he said for 'extra safety'. They were marked Samsung. The battery packs weren't that big, nothing like a Tesla. Maybe they get two, I couldn't see one going in.
Unbelievable fact of the day No.5: each and every station hosts a 90-second operation of some type. They whole process, the whole factory, every process is divided down into 90 second tasks. We stopped and watched some stations and the host chap pointed out there was no rushing. And he was right, every one of the technicians was cool and confidently carrying out their tasks unrushed.
One such 90 second operation was the engine mating to the engine mounts. Down came a 4.4SDV8 from another level onto the chassis jig. And the two techs on this station guided it onto the studs, unhooked the engine crane, hand-fed bolts onto the studs, then air-gunned the bolts, and then un-bolted the crane hooks. 90 seconds and done, next engine comes along and on and on it goes. Techs rotate a lot and can become supervisors if they're mastered enough process stations. Supervisors wear burgundy shirts. Perhaps a seemingly unimportant detail but when you look around, everything has a system, a process, a symbol, or a colour. Everything means something.
There is also a pull cord all along the line in case there's a problem. The line stops but there are 'buffer' areas so the entire 3km line doesn't grind to a halt.
We then saw wheels being fitted and things are getting pretty final by that time. Their next stop is for fluids; brake fluid, air con gas and minimal fuel. Engines come shipped with oil as do transmissions, diffs etc so they are already done.
Then soon after that, somebody in a high vis jacket gets in and as if by magic, this now-vehicle, whilst not that same actual vehicle that I saw start as a sheet of aluminium, starts up a drives off with the hazards flashing. Then another. And another. And another after that.
These guys take each car for a quick shakedown. They drive over bumps and check for rattles, check brakes and other items. Random, detailed quality checks can happen anywhere along the way.
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Unbelievable fact of the day No.6: The covered bridge. What happens next is the cars (if all QC passed) drive off. They go up a covered ramp and across a covered bridge to a site JRL acquired on the other side of a public road. Yes business is good and they've officially run out of space. So they built this covered bridge to a massive carpark. How could private company buy the airspace over the road off the council? The mind boggles. But the bridge cost, including the cost of the airspace, £25 million so we were told.
Have you ordered a new RR? I think I saw yours today.
And it looked great. Oh, and it was marked urgent.
(No kidding, that was on one car I saw on the line) 
Parts 2 and 3 coming tomorrow.... Cheers, Greg
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2011 Vogue SE 4.4 with lots of toys in Stornaway
Last edited by GGDR on 24th Sep 2018 5:41am. Edited 7 times in total
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22nd Aug 2018 10:46pm
