Future of former Liberator factory in doubt?

Antipodean Andy · Dec 7, 2008

Future of historic Willow Run plant uncertain - Ann Arbor, Michigan Business News - with The Ann Arbor News – MLive.com

A massive factory fire in Livonia a half-century ago turned out to be Washtenaw County's fortune.

The 1953 fire destroyed General Motors Corp.'s transmission factory on Plymouth Road. The giant automaker needed a new plant, and it needed it fast.

Meanwhile, Kaiser-Frazer Corp. had stopped making cars in the sprawling former B-24 bomber factory that Henry Ford built off Ecorse Road, just west of Willow Run Airport, in Ypsilanti Township.
The deal was done. The first transmission rolled off the line at the Willow Run plant in November of that year, the start of a now 55-year-old relationship between GM and Washtenaw County.

Since then the huge plant has cranked out millions of transmissions, and provided jobs to tens of thousands of people over the years. Today the factory is still making transmissions and parts that go into a few dozen GM vehicles as well as military trucks.
But now, its future is as uncertain as the rest of financially beleaguered GM and other U.S.-based automakers.

That's because the four-speed transmissions that 76 percent of GM Willow Run's employees work on are scheduled to be phased out of the plant by 2010. Right now, no new work is scheduled to come in, although the local union says it is aggressively fighting to land a new contract for something, anything - be it transmissions, engine parts or batteries.

On top of that, GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC asked Congress for loans topping $34 billion last week to help them survive. Bankruptcy is possible for GM if it doesn't get the money it needs.

Two plants in one

Two separate facilities operate at GM Willow Run under one roof that's the size of 110 football fields: GM Powertrain Willow Run, the part of the factory where four-speed automatic transmissions are made, and GM Powertrain Ypsilanti Transmission Operations, the recently renovated side where six-speeds are made.

Overall employment has plummeted at GM Willow Run from a peak of 14,000 workers in the late 1970s to more than 4,000 in 2005 and less than 1,800 now. Industry downsizing, technology advances, buyouts, layoffs and the move of 800 engineering workers to Pontiac decimated the population.

Analysts say the part of the plant that makes six-speed transmission - which GM spent at least $600 million to retool 1 million square feet of the site for starting in 2003 - should have a future. A total of 419 people work there.

"Because that plant is committed to six-speed automatics, its future looks pretty good," said Bernard Swiecki, senior project manager at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research. "There are no known reasons to fear that it will have the same fate that some of the plants we are reading about have. The world is gradually moving away from the four-speed automatics that were the norm."

The reason, Swiecki said, is fuel economy and performance. Even though gas is now below $2 a gallon, it is expected to rise again in the future to $4 a gallon, and demand for vehicles that use fuel more efficiently will rise.

But the fate of the side of the plant that makes four-speed transmissions is precarious. No new work has been announced yet, nor any new reinvestment or renovation for that part of the factory. A total of 1,346 people work there.

GM is Ypsilanti Township's largest taxpayer and one of the top 10 largest county employers.

"We are begging for new work. We got a competitive operating agreement and we gave a lot in local negotiations," said Don Skidmore, a 30-year GM Willow Run veteran and president of United Auto Workers Local 735, which represents workers at the plant. "We said we will build anything."

Dave Tatman, who recently succeeded Kingsley Wooten as plant manager, is optimistic.

"I have an unshakable confidence that we will be OK on the other side of this," Tatman said. "GM will be OK and so will Willow Run."

High-profile beginning

When it was first constructed, the giant mostly L-shaped facility that is now GM Willow Run wasn't meant to make cars, although it was built by a car company magnate and designed around automobile manufacturing technology at the time.

Instead, it was hastily built to manufacture bomber airplanes for the U.S. military during World War II. Plans were drawn up nearly overnight. Its early nickname was "Willit Run" because of how deftly it was put together. A staggering 42,000 people worked there then, easily and quickly making it the most concentrated employment site in the county.

After the war ended, Kaiser-Frazer Corp. took the site over to make vehicles. GM took over in 1953 and has owned it since.

GM also produced vehicles next door at its Willow Run Assembly plant beginning a few years later, in 1959. That hulking plant was idled in the early 1990s, putting about 4,000 people out of work. It was sold and has pretty much been mothballed since, with part of it used for warehousing.

But GM Powertrain kept going. It moved from making three-speed transmissions to four-speed, and from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive transmissions and back.

More than 14,000 people worked at the plant when Ann Arbor resident Steven Puhl hired in 1977. Puhl retired last month as superintendent of Assembly and Manufacturing and has done extensive research on the Willow Run facility.

In 1977, Puhl said, the transmission assembly operation ran five lines with two full shifts working on three products. Hiring was going full-speed.

"I lived in Harper Woods and I got a phone call and then had an interview," said Puhl, who had left a job in secondary education. "By the time I got back home from interview, I had a follow-up call for another interview."

Things are different now. In 2006, 1,135 workers took buyouts and left the plant, and another 830 left this past summer. That most recent large wave included the oldest worker at the plant, Tommy Blevins, who spent 55 years with GM and had worked at Willow Run since GM took it over in 1953, according to the union's summer newsletter.

Challenging times

The six-speed transmission side of the factory is bright and clean.
There, employees work in groups of roughly six and rotate jobs. Large scoreboard-like screens hang from the ceiling, showing where in progress a team's work is.

Automated, self-guided vehicles drive along wide aisles marked with yellow paint, moving heavy parts and large boxes between stations. There's a constant buzz and loud hum, but the machines are quiet enough to make normal conversations possible.

Three different types of six-speed transmissions are built, each of which has nearly 300 separate components. The 700,000th transmission will be built this week. The plant also ships millions of component parts to other transmission plants.

Tatman, the new plant manager who started last month, previously worked at the Willow Run in the 1980s. He went on to work at nine GM plants in three countries over 16 years before returning to Ypsilanti Township.

Tatman is confident especially in the future of the six-speed transmissions that Willow Run makes, and thinks they'll be more necessary once the economy turns and demand for trucks rises.

"Workers have tremendous questions," Tatman said. "It is incredibly important at times like this for management to be on the floor talking to employees."

"It's a very challenging time to be in the industry."
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Future of former Liberator factory in doubt?

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Future of former Liberator factory in doubt?

Thread Tools

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches