The plant has some 1,500 employees who are proud of what they do and loyal to their employer. It operates with 4 crews working 12 hour shifts from 5 to 5. Each crew takes 3 shifts in one week and then 4 shifts in the next.
Not a bad deal!
About the plant
The plant was opened in 1958 to build 3 speed transmissions and has produced more than 45 million transmissions since then.
The plant covers almost 2.5 million square feet of space. You could fit forty-two football fields inside. The entire plant is full of equipment and machine tools. It is not a place where you have to slide through rows of greasy machines though. It is quite organized and keeps in line with a place where everything is measured in microns.
There are 2,025 different machines operating on the floor apart from ancillary machines and automation work. The machines are imported from Marposs, ITW, Heller, Reishauer, Felsomat, Escofier, Gleason-Pfauter, and others. They are peening, vacuum carburizing, and heat treating. They are milling, grinding, loading, rolling, and hobbing.
What they make
They are now fully producing, including heat treating, all machining, and assembling, press working, and testing transmissions. They are producing a couple of transmissions as of now, the 5R110W and the 6R140. They are even supplying other transmission plants of Ford in Livonia and Van Dyke. They basically produce transmissions for every single North American Ford vehicle apart from the Focus and the Fiesta.
Dedication to quality
The dedication to quality among the men and women responsible for the gears is remarkable. At every single station, there are sensors, torque monitors, cameras, gaging stations, RFID tags, etc. to keep a check on the parts that are produced. These checks occur on the floor and in the metrology lab. The checks are all completed as per schedule since without traceability, gears or assemblies do not pass the system.
Considering the fact that they are making 180,000 items a day, fixed automation does seem like the most efficient approach, but fixed automation is no longer the norm here. The new concept allows them to switch from part A to part B and from product C to D as and when required.
Tolerance
One thing that is different at Sharonville as compared to other transmission plants is tolerance permits. The last step is put in the green gear with rolling dies before heat treatment. This gives the metal place for moving in the rolling process and the resultant distortion doesn't affect the performance of the gear.
Vehicles have become much quieter in recent times. Any gear noise that a transmission may generate is much more easily noticed nowadays. This forces gears to be grinded instead of being rolled since the precision is higher with grinding. Specifications are a lot tighter. They are dealing with only a few microns, for the plant and the parts as well.
Center of excellence
Sharonville remains the Gear Center of Excellence for Ford. The company wanted the technical strength and knowledgebase in one place in order to create a continuous understanding and capability of what is required for producing gears and transmissions.
