I have a ruler that they gave everyone at work a year or so after I hired in at the tank plan, when we got a quality score of 141. It was a scale that went up to145 IIRC, and was several years before the QS-9000 certification existed. They're just cheap plastic rulers they stuck a label on the back of that reads:
B-O-C GGRAND BLANC PLANT
"OUR QUALITY MEASURES UP"
141 QUALITY INDEX JULY, 1986
The funny thing about these rulers is they're 13" long instead of 12". Instead of going the extra mile, upon seeing that I immediately started telling people we went the extra inch.
It may not sound very impressive, but we went above and beyond, just a little bit.
BOC was our "nom du jour" at the time I hired in. It stood for Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac. Hey, one of those brnds is still in production!
They had just changed from Fisher Body, an automobile coachbuilder founded by the Fisher brothers in 1908. Some Fisher Body milestones include:
1930 – Slanted windshields for reduced glare
1933 – "No-Draft" ventilation, also known as Ventiplanes
1934 – One-piece steel "turret top" roofs
1935 – Former Durant Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan, opens
1936 – Dual windshield wipers
1959 – Developed and produced GM's first unibody car – The 1960 Chevrolet Corvair
1969 – Fisher's "Side Guard Beam" is introduced. Ternstedt Division merged into Fisher Body.
1974 – Invented the ignition interlock system
1974 – Produced GM's first airbag
1975 – Fisher develops GM's first all-metric vehicle, the Chevrolet Chevette
1979 – Fisher Northern Ireland established, opens plant in Dundonald, Northern Ireland
1984 – Fisher Body Division dissolves, with its operations transferred to other GM divisions. These include newly created Fisher Guide Division, Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group, and Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac Group.
1988 – Fisher Guide closes Hamilton/Fairfield, Ohio, facility
1989 – Fisher Guide merges with Inland Division to become Inland Fisher Guide
1990 – Inland Fisher Guide closes Elyria, Ohio, facility
1995 – Inland Fisher Guide absorbed into Delphi Automotive Systems
2008 – Fisher Coachworks, LLC, officially launches and begins development of the GTB-40 transit bus
2010 – Fisher Coachworks, LLC, folds and is liquidated the following year
After the change from Fisher Body to BOC, we were CLCD, Cadillac Luxury Car Division, the Grand Blanc Metal Center, and some other other names I can't recall at the moment. I think one of the names was Cadillac Motor Car. After they knocked down half of the building, the remaining half became the Weld Tooling Center, and the Deer Park where a single pregnant doe was accidentally fenced in decades ago and started a new herd was sold off and became the site Walmart, Panera Bread and a bunch of other stores.
Once built the 452,000 square foot facility would contribute a large portion of the 38,000 total tanks produced by General Motors during WWII. Fisher Body in Grand Blanc was responsible for a large portion of these tanks. Many different components of wartime necessity were produced including: M4 Series Tanks, T-26 and M-26 series Pershing tanks, M-10 Tank Destroyers, and M-36 Tank Destroyers. As an example of the massive tank production that occurred, a contract was given to Fisher Body for 1800 M10 Tank Destroyers which was fulfilled with the total production of 5,668 M10 Tanks in December 1943. The total number of tanks produced is staggering as 18,413 Tanks and Tank Destroyers were built between 1942 and 1945. The Final tank produced in Grand Blanc was a M36 Tank Destroyer pictured in Front of the Fisher Body Plant (Final Tank). These numerous tanks undoubtedly saw action in not only WWII, but also in the Vietnam War.
When I worked there, there was still a concrete test track for the tanks left over that was used as storage for a lot of large dies for parts that were no longer made, or only a run of them were made as service parts on rare occasions. All of the body parts for the 1992 Cadillac Seville and Eldorado were made there. The Seville had a hole for the third brake light cut into the deck lid with an invisible laser, and another infrared laser stitch-welded the bracket to the inside of the skin of the deck lid. It was only possible to weld to that thin metal without destroying it by using a laser, and it actually looked like stitches the way it skipped spaces and welded other places in between. The robotic welders were each contained in a small room with a garage door on it, so when the operators hit the run buttons, the doors closed and the robots went to work, visible through windows on the side walls that were shielded to keep them from blinding people. The entire side of the Eldorado from the front pillar to the rear pillar, including the roof support and rocker panel, was all made of one piece of steel called a side ring. The blanks there were stamped from were made of pieces of steel of different thicknesses laser welded into a single piece before they were stamped out. I don't know where the blanks came from, but the front part where the doors pillars were was thick and other parts that didn't need to be as thick were made of thinner steel. One of my jobs was adding other parts for robots to weld onto the side ring. It was all pretty advanced stuff for 1992, or at least I thought so. The laser cutting and welding wasn't used at any other auto plant in the country.
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