Ford River Rouge Factory Tour
The tour of the assembly plant at the Ford River Rouge complex in Dearborn, MI is one of the main things to do for tourists visiting Detroit. This is the factory where they put together F-150 pickup trucks. It was fourth on our list, after the Motown Museum, the Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art, all of which are closed on Mondays.
To get to "the Rouge" from Detroit, you have to drive past it, a few miles into suburban Dearborn, to an institution called "The Henry Ford." Here you park (for a fee), buy your pass, and board the shuttle bus back towards the factory. The corridors of this university-like great hall offer other attractions: the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, An Olde Time Village and petting farm, an IMAX theater, several restaurants, and more. Banners proclaim the institution's impactful works, like The Innovation Project: "Inside every child is the potential to change the world."
On a December weekday afternoon, the ornate hallways were empty, except for a few friendly and professional employees. The shuttle bus, the size of a city bus, had no passengers but the two of us. The driver didn't smile. The model village, sitting among the office park headquarters of a multinational corporation, in an industrial metropolis struggling with environmental degradation and urban decline, didn't look as idyllic as, say, Colonial Williamsburg.
Arriving at the Rouge complex, we encountered an elaborate "VIP" tour guidance apparatus that seemed to serve two purposes. One may have been to prevent tourists from wandering towards dangerous, possibly scandalous areas of the plant. The other conspicuous goal of the many smiling guides and intro activities was to paint the Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford specifically in a positive light.
The intro videos were ridiculous but not surprising. First we were treated to a documentary about the life and innovations of Henry Ford. It did manage to cover the violent attacks he ordered against his employees who began to organize a union, followed by the comment that "although Henry Ford initially opposed unions, he came to see them as one of his greatest assets." One wonders if this narrative twist was required to meet the approval of union representatives. In fact, United Auto Workers was listed as a producer or sponsor of the video. The second video hyped us up with loud rock music, flashing lights, theatrical wind gusts, much-talked-about dancing robots, and more incredible innovations. It was about the F-150.
Dazzled, we were ushered into an elevator to the observation deck. We saw a multitude of industrial buildings old and new, some belching steam and others sitting quiet. A guide, when asked what we were looking at, gave us a spiel about Ford's environmental innovations. After about ten minutes, she went into some good info about the different buildings and their functions, the shipping channel dredged as a public works project, the oceangoing vessels that supplied the raw materials, the turning basin dug for such ships, and her personal experiences boating on the Detroit River. She was knowledgeable, and as we gazed at the urban industrial landscape and the flat horizon, we felt some connection with this place. Recounting Ford's decision to locate the Rouge on low value wetlands and build everything on piles sunk into the swamp, our guide said, "I almost hate using this word, because it sounds cheesy, but he really was a visionary." With that, we finally got to see the plant itself.
The assembly plant is a fairly new, huge, flat-topped building that looks like a warehouse only with a higher ceiling. We walked around a catwalk high above the assembly line, and stared at people while they worked.
The room was clean, bright and surprisingly quiet. People were doing roughly 60 second tasks over and over as the truck bodies were moving down the line, working alongside robots doing other tasks like affixing windshields. None of the human tasks seemed especially arduous. For instance to get to the underside of the body, there was a workstation in a well in the floor beneath the line, so that the worker could stand rather than lie on their back. Everyone was moving constantly.
One woman looked up at us a couple of times as we stared at her from awkwardly from above. It seemed like it must be weird to see people spending their leisure time observing you at your job. It also seemed like she was bored. A tour guide told us that the workers switched tasks throughout the day "to eliminate boredom." I imagine this innovation could only reduce boredom at best.
People were generally picking up parts and affixing them to the truck bodies using various tools. Many of the tools seemed to be attached to hydraulic lines. Other people rode through the aisles in little carts, tending to things. Everyone was wearing normal street clothes, including a lot of sweatshirts because it was kind of cold. Someone had a college sweatshirt. It seemed to be a relatively diverse group of people in terms of gender and skin color. No one seemed to be getting dirty.
Other parts of the building were blocked from view by walls. It was not clear how much of the assembly line we could see, although guides were available to answer any questions. Perhaps the hidden parts of the assembly line are not as presentable, we wondered? The tour went nowhere near the other factory buildings at the River Rouge complex, and it's hard to imagine the foundry, the stamping mill, or the painting and drying areas being nearly so clean and quiet. Certainly the nearby steel mills, now owned by a Russian company according to the tour guide, were off limits. It is unfortunate that the industrial mysteries contained therein are not revealed to tourists, but not surprising, and so not exactly disappointing.
On our way out, in the gathering dusk, we passed by some Ford corporate buildings in grassy lawns. It was rush hour, and a long line of cars was backed up waiting to turn one by one out of the parking lot and onto the frontage road of the adjacent highway to go home. We pondered, what hath Ford wrought?
To get to "the Rouge" from Detroit, you have to drive past it, a few miles into suburban Dearborn, to an institution called "The Henry Ford." Here you park (for a fee), buy your pass, and board the shuttle bus back towards the factory. The corridors of this university-like great hall offer other attractions: the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, An Olde Time Village and petting farm, an IMAX theater, several restaurants, and more. Banners proclaim the institution's impactful works, like The Innovation Project: "Inside every child is the potential to change the world."
On a December weekday afternoon, the ornate hallways were empty, except for a few friendly and professional employees. The shuttle bus, the size of a city bus, had no passengers but the two of us. The driver didn't smile. The model village, sitting among the office park headquarters of a multinational corporation, in an industrial metropolis struggling with environmental degradation and urban decline, didn't look as idyllic as, say, Colonial Williamsburg.
Arriving at the Rouge complex, we encountered an elaborate "VIP" tour guidance apparatus that seemed to serve two purposes. One may have been to prevent tourists from wandering towards dangerous, possibly scandalous areas of the plant. The other conspicuous goal of the many smiling guides and intro activities was to paint the Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford specifically in a positive light.
The intro videos were ridiculous but not surprising. First we were treated to a documentary about the life and innovations of Henry Ford. It did manage to cover the violent attacks he ordered against his employees who began to organize a union, followed by the comment that "although Henry Ford initially opposed unions, he came to see them as one of his greatest assets." One wonders if this narrative twist was required to meet the approval of union representatives. In fact, United Auto Workers was listed as a producer or sponsor of the video. The second video hyped us up with loud rock music, flashing lights, theatrical wind gusts, much-talked-about dancing robots, and more incredible innovations. It was about the F-150.
Dazzled, we were ushered into an elevator to the observation deck. We saw a multitude of industrial buildings old and new, some belching steam and others sitting quiet. A guide, when asked what we were looking at, gave us a spiel about Ford's environmental innovations. After about ten minutes, she went into some good info about the different buildings and their functions, the shipping channel dredged as a public works project, the oceangoing vessels that supplied the raw materials, the turning basin dug for such ships, and her personal experiences boating on the Detroit River. She was knowledgeable, and as we gazed at the urban industrial landscape and the flat horizon, we felt some connection with this place. Recounting Ford's decision to locate the Rouge on low value wetlands and build everything on piles sunk into the swamp, our guide said, "I almost hate using this word, because it sounds cheesy, but he really was a visionary." With that, we finally got to see the plant itself.
The assembly plant is a fairly new, huge, flat-topped building that looks like a warehouse only with a higher ceiling. We walked around a catwalk high above the assembly line, and stared at people while they worked.
The room was clean, bright and surprisingly quiet. People were doing roughly 60 second tasks over and over as the truck bodies were moving down the line, working alongside robots doing other tasks like affixing windshields. None of the human tasks seemed especially arduous. For instance to get to the underside of the body, there was a workstation in a well in the floor beneath the line, so that the worker could stand rather than lie on their back. Everyone was moving constantly.
One woman looked up at us a couple of times as we stared at her from awkwardly from above. It seemed like it must be weird to see people spending their leisure time observing you at your job. It also seemed like she was bored. A tour guide told us that the workers switched tasks throughout the day "to eliminate boredom." I imagine this innovation could only reduce boredom at best.
People were generally picking up parts and affixing them to the truck bodies using various tools. Many of the tools seemed to be attached to hydraulic lines. Other people rode through the aisles in little carts, tending to things. Everyone was wearing normal street clothes, including a lot of sweatshirts because it was kind of cold. Someone had a college sweatshirt. It seemed to be a relatively diverse group of people in terms of gender and skin color. No one seemed to be getting dirty.
Other parts of the building were blocked from view by walls. It was not clear how much of the assembly line we could see, although guides were available to answer any questions. Perhaps the hidden parts of the assembly line are not as presentable, we wondered? The tour went nowhere near the other factory buildings at the River Rouge complex, and it's hard to imagine the foundry, the stamping mill, or the painting and drying areas being nearly so clean and quiet. Certainly the nearby steel mills, now owned by a Russian company according to the tour guide, were off limits. It is unfortunate that the industrial mysteries contained therein are not revealed to tourists, but not surprising, and so not exactly disappointing.
On our way out, in the gathering dusk, we passed by some Ford corporate buildings in grassy lawns. It was rush hour, and a long line of cars was backed up waiting to turn one by one out of the parking lot and onto the frontage road of the adjacent highway to go home. We pondered, what hath Ford wrought?
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