Maybe someone here works in an auto assembly plant and knows how this generally works. I'm curious about the order that cars are built in. For instance, will Ford be building coupes and convertibles simultaneously or do they build coupes for six days (to pull a number out of the air) then build convertibles for two days? Do they wait until they have X number of orders for glass roof coupes before building any so that they can build a bunch in a row?

Same thing for paint. Are they painting all colors every day, or do they only paint cars in a couple colors for a few days, then paint a couple other colors for a few days? I'm assuming that there's a way to run a plant more efficiently than just building the cars in the order that they receive orders from the dealers.

 

Im not an expert.. nor do i work for any automaker. but i have watched many TV shows on full production lines..

Namely the camaro, porsche, lamborghini. etc..

from what i saw they were building converts right next to hardtops, targa's, etc. going out on a limb saying that im sure all companies do "ROUGHLY" ( i use the term loosly) the same..

the order comes in. gets scanned gets bar coded then all the parts meet up at one point or another.. if you get a chance to watch the assembly its quite amazing.. they put a full camaro together. from the plain sheet of steel to full assembly and final QC in 18 hours.. fromt he way it looked they were doing about 40+ cars an hour..

 

I love that show, ultimate factory, I wish ford would let them do a mustang episode.

 

Ford builds coupes, converts, v6 v8 AND Mazda 6 simultaneously at AAI
Colors are per car and they are not batched

 

Thanks, guys, good to know. So no one has to worry about their car being delayed because they chose an unconventional combination of body style and color, and the factory is waiting for more of the same before building a batch.

 

correct. However if say they find find an issue with convets that could affect converts and not coupes or visa versa. but that could be said for anything (only v6, only manual etc.)