Today on Fast Forward, we're visiting the west side of the state.
West Point to be exact, looking for another great Georgia company for this episode.
So we--oh great--our van broke down.
How are we ever gonna find a company to profile now?
Wait a second...
Welcome to another episode of Fast Forward.
Today we're visiting Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia in West Point.
And to go along with being one of
the biggest industrial projects ever undertaken in the state, they've also got a pretty huge sign.
They're the second largest channel letters in the world.
That's what you need when your factory is one mile long with two million square
feet of shop space and what it takes to make this many cars.
How many you ask?
We're running about 360,000 units out of here a year.
About one every minute.
That's Randy Jackson, and he's kind of important to this operation.
But let's find out how to turn this into this.
Tell us how to make a car.
The process really begins with the steel coils.
They're delivered to our stamping shop.
And you're stamping out doors, hoods, trunk lids.
Then those go over to the next shop called the weld shop.
And there, each of those body parts are welded together by hundreds of robots
and that is the neatest place in the whole plant.
Then it basically leaves and moves over into the paint shop.
Where it's spray painted by robots.
And it transfers over to the assembly shop and
the general assembly shop all the other parts are added in.
You're putting the seats in, you're putting the carpet in, you're putting the headliners in,
you're putting tail lights, headlights.
All of those things come together and then we
send the vehicle out to the test track.
Test track?
A little over two miles, around checks everything.
Noise, checks vibrations, checks handling.
Comes back into the site.
Takes a shower bath, checks the water, dries off.
And from there it goes either by rail or by truck to our dealers.
Nice.
And can we go back to that test track? More info on that please.
Well as soon as a car come off the line, we're the first people to get it.
So can we test our broken-down van on the track?
Unfortunately, and I have had many, many requests, we cannot put our car on the test track.
Figured.
In any case, this is a pretty cool job.
Being the first person to check out every aspect of the car, from the tires to the transmission.
And speaking of that, we're teaching the transmission how to be a transmission
and that relies on some engineering because car transmissions use something
called the transfer of energy you see a transmitted
transmits energy from the engine to the wheels and it uses a simple machine in
this case gears to help with the process gears are wheels and axles that have
teeth not those kind of teeth these kind of teeth and they mesh with teeth on
another gear this can be used to not only change the direction of motion but
can also magnify the force when sinking gears of different sizes the same way
bicycles become easier or harder to pedal when you change gears okay testing
brand new cars on a two-mile track is a pretty cool job
what else do the folks around here do production team members can do a variety
of different positions here within our assembly process then we have a whole
other group of people who are supporting and what do you do I'm a safety
specialist here at Kia Motors another word for this type of work is ergonomic
s-- so what does an ergonomist do ergonomics is the work of watching other
people work and that's good work if you can get it watching other people work
sign me up for some of that even though believe it or not this job requires a
background in biology Shana the biology classes relate to how bodies are put
together and as that relates to humans it helps me with biomechanics which is
an important part of ergonomics biomechanics is the engineering side of
the human body so when we think of a joint it's a lever so it's really a
human body from the mechanical standpoint biomechanics okay by the way
this place isn't exactly what I was expecting
isn't factory work supposed to be dirty and repetitive some people might think
that if you're working on an assembly line in a factory you're gonna do the
exact same job over and over again all day and that's just not true it's not
redundant it's not what people think about manufacturing I think one
misconception is that it's really dirty and Kia is the cleanest factory I've
been in and some people are really surprised at
the amount of robotics that we have inside our facility yeah I'm one of
those people for example in our weld shop alone we have more than 280 robots
that are joining all these body panels together so it's really important to be
able to interact with the robots be able to program them or update or make
changes in order to update the manufacturing process here and a lot of
schools have robotics clubs that can help with those skills but let's be
honest those clubs are well what's the word I think it is true that the
Robotics Club is for nerds that's it but the thing that people forget is that
nerds run the world as soon as you get out of high school in college
nerds run the world mmm never thought of it that way anything else we should know
he has a good company to work with the benefits are very good it's a dynamic
job that people I work with are great what I enjoy most about my job is
working with the people and we're going to be here a long long time so this is
not just one generation it'll be multiple generations that we'll be able
to enjoy that this is the best place I've ever worked it sure sounds like it
and if we can fix our van or maybe borrow one of those sweet Sorrento's
we'll find even more great jobs on the next episode of fast forward
to work