Spoke to the people who are sorting out my new car today. It's going to be a factory order so I was asking for a delivery date as I'm going away in July. They said "Don't worry, it will be on the boat before the factory shuts down for the summer in August".
Call me nosey but...
Do all car factories close for the summer?
Do they make extra cars during the rest of the year to balance this out?
Are the workers forced to take their holidays in August rather than in the rest of the year?
Doesn't really make sense to me, and I'm intrigued! (Well, it takes my mind off picturing my little car all alone on the big boat and then the big scary transporter... and the fact that selling Polo is merely weeks away now :( )
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Fords always shut for three weeks, last week in July and first two in August. At least they did in Dagenham.
With assembly line work I think it woud be impractical to have staggering of the main holiday as the lines need to be fully manned to facilitate production.
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Yes, yes and yes
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Its also the time when "the line" is serviced, changed and improved. The assembly line is in its own right a very big, very complex machine.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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..and when the following year's models are produced on their return.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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As for 'making extra cars', few (if any) car plants are running at max capacity anyway.
It's always seem daft to me that the UK has arranged the peak registration time (was Aug, now Sept) to coincide with the car plant shutdowns.
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There are three shutdown periods for most manufacturers. One week for Whitsun week (this week), second is summer shutdown (July / August) third is in October.
These always fall in line with the school holidays. As TVM says above, the track usually gets a bit of maintenance during the shutdown period and most of our process/facility tweaking gets done as well during this time.
As an engineer, we love shutdown periods as we get rid of the moaning production staff for a week or two :)
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There are three shutdown periods for most manufacturers. One week for Whitsun week (this week), second is summer shutdown (July / August) third is in October. These always fall in line with the school holidays. As TVM says above, the track usually gets a bit of maintenance during the shutdown period and most of our process/facility tweaking gets done as well during this time. As an engineer, we love shutdown periods as we get rid of the moaning production staff for a week or two :)
Well when I worked for Ford, there was only the summer 3 wk shutdown, as mentioned by another poster earlier.
Most of the Engineering/Maintenance people where off too - little or no 'maintenance' was *ever* done. Machines were run until they broke down, and then repaired (always in a huge panic, as it costs a fortune to stop the line). Shutdowns were used to fit new machines, change things around etc, and that work was generally done by contractors - only a skeleton staff of employees worked shutdowns.
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An awful lot of employees worked the shutdown-but for the contractors,cash-in-hand.
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