The Hummer H2 Plant

The H2 plant is a state-of-the-art plant and was operated much like any other GM plant - and very unlike the H1 facility. Larry Day, Program Manager for Operations, kept things running smoothly for many years and played a role in the several awards the plant received. In order to build the H2 plant next door to the H1 plant, Hummer had to purchase 51 homes. Built in just sixteen months, the $245million facility and parking lot now sit where those home sites were. In fact, the former Bolson Street is now the main walk-way through the plant.

RoDip-3 process in action on an H2
One of the biggest boasts for the H2 plant is that it has the first RoDip-3 system in North America. The RoDip-3 is designed to move vehicles through e-coat materials as an alternative to the conventional pendulum conveyor approach. The RoDip-3, explains, Kosta Milojevic, director, Product Development, in the Paint Automation Group, literally flips a vehicle 360 degrees, end-for-end, in the tank. (Automotive Design & Production)

Though 24 robots are in use throughout the plant (22 do welds), 70% of the welds are still done by hand. UAW #5 is the oldest auto workers union in the US and is the same union that produced Studebakers. The workers operate in teams, and used to crank out around 86 H2s per shift. I'm going to miss them and the state of the art H2 plant - acknowldeged as one of the most modern in the world!