Manufacturing Day highlights industry for Valley students

October 3, 2015 at 12:01a.m.

By KALEA HALL | khall@vindy.com

LORDSTOWN

Watching the Chevrolet Cruze make its way down the assembly line sparked the interest of 13-year-old Grace Mangapora.

The eighth-grader at Canfield Village Middle School toured the General Motors Lordstown Complex on Friday with her biotechnology class for Manufacturing Day.

“Today kind of influenced me to work somewhere in engineering,” Grace said. “I thought it was really interesting, and I would consider working here when I get older.”

Grace already has some knowledge. Her grandfather, Ben Mangapora, worked at the Lordstown plant for 30 years testing the vehicles at the end of the line.

“The building of the cars and how huge this place is, is fascinating,” Grace added.

The 6.2-million-square-foot plant is where the best-selling Cruze, a compact car, is built and has been since fall 2010. On Friday, the plant, where 4,500 people work, surpassed 1.4 million Cruzes built. Last year alone, there were more than 290,000 Cruzes built at the Lordstown plant on Hallock-Young Road.

Leaders at the Lordstown plant had 19 students from Canfield and about 15 marketing students from Youngstown State University come to the assembly side of the facility to see what happens after the Cruze gets there.

Brianna Dunlap, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Canfield Village, wants to become an engineer of some sort or a lawyer.

“It was really interesting to see how meticulous it is and how they all work together to create one car,” Brianna said of the tour.

Before it gets to assembly, the beginnings of the Cruze is with a coil of steel that is stamped to form the body of the car, then it gets painted and sent off to vehicle assembly.

“Manufacturing Day is to inspire you to become manufacturers,” Glenn Johnson, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, told the students. “You are going to see painted vehicles in various stages of production. We will show you some of the finished product.”

The students went through the trim shop, where basically everything a customer sees is installed. They also received a tour of the new $60 million trim shop that took about a year to install at the plant. The new shop now sits where the paint shop used to be.

“We brought it up to the latest and greatest manufacturing concepts,” said Brit Winter, general assembly launch manager. “It’s going to improve efficiencies, ergonomics, quality and throughput.”

The switch to a new shop is to prepare to build the next-generation Cruze – a lighter, yet larger version of its predecessor that comes with a revamped style, more safety and connectivity features. The new Cruze will hit sales floors in spring 2016.

The new trim shop comes with a moving platform for workers to move with the car. In the current system, the workers have to walk with the system.

“This is actually much better for the operator to focus on the job,” Winter said.

In the center of the platform is a scissor lift, which makes it easier if the car needs to be raised. A kit cart on the moving platform provides workers with the parts to do the job. “The difference will be they don’t have to discern between the content,” Winter said. “Everything is laid out.”

The new process will maximize time usage.

“The intent being is it gets to the customer more efficiently,” Winter said.

Lordstown will be the first GM plant to build the next-generation Cruze.

After students learned how the engine and other parts make it inside the car and saw the final product, they were able to check out the next-generation Cruze.

“Most people don’t have that opportunity and I did,” Grace said of the new Cruze.