InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

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Inside GM's Newest U.S. Assembly Plant

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General Motor's Lansing Delta plant in Michigan produces the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook. The state-of-the-art facility was built in 2006 and employs 2,800 people. The plant collects rainwater on its roof and uses it to flush toilets--one of the environmentally friendly practices that has made it the only auto plant in the world to earn gold-level certification with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system.

General Motor's Lansing Delta plant in Michigan produces the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook. The state-of-the-art facility was built in 2006 and employs 2,800 people. The plant collects rainwater on its roof and uses it to flush toilets--one of the environmentally friendly practices that has made it the only auto plant in the world to earn gold-level certification with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system.  After auto bodies are made in the stamping and body shop sections of the plant and painted, they enter the assembly line at the GM Lansing Delta plant.  A GM plant employee checks a Windows XP terminal for assembly information. GM personnel can get status views from the in-plant order management system, which talks to thousands of networked plant devices and also connects to the outside supply chain to keep needed parts coming in. Most suppliers are local and deliver materials in four-hour production batches. Personnel also can view the product routing and tracking system, which ensures such things as the correct paint color on a specific vehicle. Terminals offer a color-coded view of production status to alert employees to any stalls or problems.  An automated, guided cart, controlled by magnetic strip, carries a vehicle cockpit to the assembly line at GM Lansing Delta.  A Buick Enclave cockpit is ready to be assembled into a vehicle.  A wireless order system on a plant truck tells a GM employee the parts he needs to retrieve. A 22 Mbyte per second wireless network runs throughout the plant.  An automated cart carries an entire vehicle chassis to the assembly line.  The body and chassis of a vehicle are married on the line at the GM Lansing Delta plant.  Tires come down this spiral-shaped machine, sequenced and ready for assembly with vehicles as they come down the line.  Now it's time to add on the doors.  A finished Buick Enclave is driven off the line. It will now undergo a driving test at 70 mph, quality checks, a water test, and a quarter-mile   Vehicles line up to enter a high-pressure wash to check for leaks, one of the final points of assembly at the GM Lansing Delta plant.  The Ethernet switch box that runs the network of GM Lansing Delta's body shop and its 1,200 robots.  Two quality control robots take digital photos of a GM vehicle part. Technicians will later examine the photos. The body shop section of GM Lansing Delta is the worksite of some 1,200 robots that work alongside warm-blooded technicians. GM began using robots in its body shops more than 10 years ago. 


General Motor's Lansing Delta plant in Michigan produces the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook. The state-of-the-art facility was built in 2006 and employs 2,800 people. The plant collects rainwater on its roof and uses it to flush toilets--one of the environmentally friendly practices that has made it the only auto plant in the world to earn gold-level certification with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system.