NILES, MICH. Factory tours are becoming endangered experiences

Simplicity Pattern factory offers up-close, real tours of its operations.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
NILES, Mich. -- Machines roar, water steams, axles whirl, pulp flattens, wheels go round and round. Out the other end comes a stream of pink tissue paper big enough to gift wrap an elephant.
And that's just the start of production at the huge Simplicity Pattern factory, which makes sewing patterns for the world.
A tour of this 1931 factory is like stepping back in bittersweet time. The cement floors are blackened with age. It smells like warm wood pulp and ink. Country music wafts through the building. At one time, Simplicity had 1,200 workers just to fold the patterns and put them in envelopes. Now three machines do that work. At one time, the factory had 3,300 employees. Now it has 170.
Visit a factory, and it will tell you about more than the products. It will tell you about the American workplace.
Cheesecake, cereal, coffins, trucks, chemicals, whistles and paper all have their stories.
But like a kiss, a factory must be experienced firsthand. Videos don't cut it. Virtual is second-rate. Reading about it won't do.
Take the opportunity
So if you get a chance to see a real factory tour, with real people making real products, take it. The same forces squeezing American manufacturing -- security, competition and high technology -- are also making it more difficult for plants to open themselves to tours.
Auto plants are a case in point. Michigan may be home of the auto industry, but here are no plant tours in this state. In April, GM Lansing Car Assembly, which had offered tours for decades, suspended them because of security concerns. They likely won't restart, a GM spokesman said. Chrysler and Ford have none.
The nearest auto tours are at the GM SUV plant in Janesville, Wis.; the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky.; and the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Ky.
The good news? In May, Ford will restart tours of its famous Rouge plant in Dearborn. In conjunction with the Henry Ford Museum, visitors will get a chance to see the F-150 truck production line and watch an elaborate multimedia presentation on auto history.
Just for show
Increasingly, factory tours aren't the real thing. Instead, they are visitor centers geared toward children and shoppers.
One of the most successful in the Great Lakes region is the colorful Kellogg's Cereal City in Battle Creek. Factory tours ended in 1986, but the visitors center is a child's dream. Get your picture taken on a cereal box, watch a mock production line, make a Fruit Loops necklace and see how children eat breakfast around the world. Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle and Pop dominate the huge gift shop.
Many factories offer only "virtual tours" on their Web sites.
You can still see real candy manufactured at Morley in Clinton Township. Real Delftware painted at DeKlomp in Holland. Real cheesecake made at Eli's Cheesecake in Chicago. Real whistle production at American Whistle in Columbus. And real sewing patterns in Niles.
Up-close, real view
At Simplicity, the staff is so seasoned that any one of them could lead a tour. The company has been bought and sold many times since 1927, but the Niles plant just keeps churning out Simplicity sewing patterns -- 42 million a year.
The beauty of this tour is the lack of hype and the up-close view. One room of the 750,000-square-foot factory is nothing but collections of surplus paper -- unused diaper inserts, old newspapers, recycled paper from other manufacturers.
The towers of paper are mixed into a certain secret recipe and smushed down into vats of goopy pulp like lumpy cake batter, awaiting transformation.
Another room holds the noisy paper-making machines. Another has several four-color presses to print envelopes.
Another has three Clauberg presses that print and fold 100,000 patterns a day. In the customer service department, confused customers can get help.
Eight times a year, 1 million Simplicity patterns are shipped to Europe, South Africa, Australia, Asia and America. And that's not even counting the Burda and New Look lines also produced here.
The tour requires safety glasses and closed-toe shoes. But unlike many tours, you get to see everything up close and personal and even meet some workers.
You may run into Mary Williams, a clerk. She's been at Simplicity for 40 years, and her mother worked there before her.
"Mother worked in binding, and I remember her bringing home old pattern catalogs," she says. "We'd cut the ladies out for paper dolls."
Endurance
Times have been good at Simplicity, and times have been rough. That the factory is still here, still churning out patterns and still open to the public is a tribute to its pluck and endurance.
But if you want to see a factory tour, go now.
Factory tours may be popular and good public relations, but the millions of American manufacturing jobs lost in recent decades have made them an endangered experience.
Brad Ritter of the Michigan Manufacturing Association, which represents 3,000 manufacturers, says it encourages its members to open their doors for public tours every May. Two years ago, 21 factories participated. This year, only 10 did.
"Sept. 11 changed a lot," says Ritter, with understatement. "And the economy."