Did anyone on here work at Fisher Body? What was it like?
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Did anyone on here work at Fisher Body? What was it like?
I worked there for six months during late 1978 and early 1979. In 1978, I was a young manufacturing engineer in the Production Engineering Activity at the Fisher Body General Offices in Warren, MI. At the time, GM was bringing both the "X" and "E" bodies into production and I was temporarily transferred to assist in the pilot production of those bodies, which were built at FB Plant 21. When Plant 21 was not building pilot bodies, they were normally producing Cadillac Limousines.
My assignment was to serve as one of three "rework coordinators", which meant it was up to us to provide templates and otherwise assist in the incorporation of late engineering changes into the pilot parts on hand as well as the tooling if it was affected by the change. Back then, the product engineers treated the pilot builds as if they were still prototype builds, meaning they were making continuous changes to the product even as the production process and tooling were supposedly being validated. The rework coordinator's job was to figure out on-the-fly how to coordinate and incorporate those changes without compromising the production-intent build process.
We worked out of a [[3rd ? floor) office on the east side of the building, with a nice view of the I-75 expressway. I was impressed by the skills of the body shop employees, particularly the guys in the solder booths and on the repair lines. They could fill in those body panel joints and grind them flush so it looked like a single panel, regardless of how far off the metal was from spec. The ding men on the body-in-white repair line could quickly and skillfully bump out any kind of dent using just a handful of tools and a couple of different kinds of mallets.
Is that the Fisher body Fleetwood plant that was on Fort St. and Springwells? If That is the plant you are asking about I worked there from 74-78, on the 6th floor as a loner for 2 years then moved into being a janitor for 2 years.
No, it's on Piquette.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlebuddy
I worked in the "IBM" dept. in the summer of 1955. GM was going full blast, sales of the '55 Chevy were brisk, and all was well.
Our function was basically quality control reporting, and we were responsible for the various warranty reports culled from the dealer invoices for repairs. We had the minimum, very primitive and basic IBM machines and one of the first [[602?) computers. We were on the service dept. floor [[2nd), and had one of the only air-conditioned offices because of the IBM machines. A Mr. Flaherty was the big boss, my boss was Eldon Hart, and Frank Stover was the top guy among us underlings.
We had a great view of I-75, and one drawback was Plant 21 had no cafeteria, so we had to walk across the street to another Fisher Body plant to get a lunch, if we didn't choose to bring one.
At that time, although by no means modern, the plant was functional and a lack of parking was the only common gripe because the only way to get a space in the small parking lot was to get to work early.
Barbara Chase was the personnel dept. secretary, and she would tell us about the exit interviews in which the departing employees would usually mention that Mr. Flaherty had never bothered to say "hello" to them, when he passed them in an aisleway on his way back or forth.
I remember that the most common warranty problem at that time was the generator on the '55 Chevy.
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