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This is part one of a three-part series. DaimlerChrysler asked us not to photograph inside this plant, and we honored their wishes.
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“Our vision of great performance is to completely satisfy every customer. The people of Warren Truck Assembly are the advocate of the customer. This vision will be achieved through creating a work environment that enhances each team member’s sense of contribution, pride, respect, and success of others. This is a task that never ends.” – Plant Manager Roy T. Smith
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Grand Central Station has nothing on this place. The Warren Truck Assembly Plant is part of DaimlerChrysler’s sprawling Dodge City Complex, which also includes a stamping plant and nearby engine plant. Dodge City is located just outside the Detroit city limits in suburban Warren. The truck plant alone is home to nearly 4,000 employees. The plant, which runs two eight-hour shifts, churns out 68 of the wildly popular full-size Dodge Ram 1500 (half-ton) and compact Dodge Dakota pickup trucks each hour. Doing the math, that works out to 1,088 units per day. Warren Truck Assembly is one of four locations that build the full-size trucks, but the only facility that builds the Dakota.
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As you enter the plant, two observations come immediately to mind. The first is that this place is extremely busy, which is to say that nobody is standing around empty-handed, a problem observed in other assembly plants that will go unnamed in this article. Between man and machine, there is constant motion all around this enormous facility. The second is that every square foot of this plant is being utilized in some form or fashion to build trucks. Within the nearly three million square feet of floor space in the plant, DaimlerChrysler employs 10.5 miles of overhead, chain, and flat top conveyors.
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As we began our way down the “Dodge Truck Trail”—the walkway along the assembly line, we could observe bare frames being added to the line on one side of us, disappear out of sight, and reappear as painted body-on-frame subassemblies rolling along on the other side. The sheet metal panels used on these trucks are super clean, since they are stamped just next door. Once the body is painted, the doors are removed from the cab, tagged, assembled, then reinstalled much further down the line. The process, which is quite remarkable, is necessary to prevent damage to the cab as the door is assembled.
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Each operator on the assembly line has his or her own computer to enter data upon completion of a particular component’s assembly. The plant employs a state-of-the-art caster-camber machine that aligns the vehicle, and a simulator that runs the trucks over hills and steep grades as well as a test track, in order to road-test 100% of the production vehicles.
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The current full-size Ram and compact Dakota represent a renaissance of sorts for DaimlerChrysler, whose Warren Truck Assembly plant first began assembling Dodge trucks in 1938. In the early 1980s, when Chrysler was facing bankruptcy, they prepared to get out of the truck market, and close all of their truck plants, including Warren. Chrysler’s K-car platform and minivan helped save the carmaker, and the Warren facility underwent a renovation in 1986 wherein a superstructure was built inside the existing plant—a plant within a plant—to accommodate upgraded technology. This helped pave the way for such innovations as the Cummins Turbo Diesel and the uniquely sized Dakota, which is considered a compact truck, but is larger than compact trucks offered by either Ford or GM. The current model Dodge Ram, which replaced the dated D-model truck, followed in 1993 as a 1994 model and is currently one of the top five selling vehicles overall.
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We’d like to thank Mr. George Dimas, the administrator of training and education at the Dodge City complex, and Mr. Roy T. Smith, Warren Truck Assembly Plant Manager, for the tour. We now have a greater appreciation for the assembly process of these vehicles, and an understanding of why they are so popular.
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Tale of the Tape on Warren Truck Assembly
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Recent Awards Won by Warren Truck Assembly Vehicles
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