TOUR AMERICA 2019: KENTUCKY, THE BLUEGRASS STATE

Home Is Where We Park It: Whispering Hills RV Park, Georgetown, KY

June 25, 2019

Temperature 84 degrees

Toyota Factory Tour

Time for our first sightseeing tour. Today would be the Toyota Factory Tour which is just ten minutes from our home.

I’ll be sharing both pictures that I took and some stock pictures from off the internet. They don’t want you taking any pictures in the factory. When asked why they simply say Out of respect for the privacy of our team members. OK.

The tour was at 9:30 am so we were up and at it rather early by our standards. A left, another left, another left turn, then a right turn and we were there.

Some quick facts about this facility:

it is the largest vehicle assembly plant in Toyota’s global production network. It is the size of 169 foot ball fields
the plant began production in May 1988 building the 4-cylinder Toyota Camry.
This is the first Camry that came off the production line
this is a time line of what has occurred at this plant.
it takes on average 20 to 22 hours to produce each car. Each car has also been ordered before they begin to build it.
on average a car rolls off the assembly line every minute or less
the plant is a city onto itself, they have doctors on call 7/24, a business center, a physical fitness center, several cafeterias, athletic fields, hiking trails and so much more I can’t remember it all
starting hourly wage is $18 per hour. But less one thinks they can simply walk in, apply, be hired and begin to work on the line, think again.
there is one team leader per every five team members. The team leader will step in for a team member whenever necessary, for instance if someone calls in sick, someone needs to go to the bathroom, or whatever
each team member rotates tasks every two hours, meaning they do four completely different tasks on the line each day
all of the waste produced on-site is either recycled or reused and nothing is sent to landfills.
The grounds also sports a very large vegetable garden. In 2005, the produce produced at this facility helped a nearby charitable organization, God’s Pantry, distribute 2.5 million pounds of produce
the garden also produces a full crop of pumpkins used at the Toyota Child Development Center for carving at Halloween, and corn which enhances the compost pile
the Toyota Camry, the Avalon Sedan as well as the Lexus ES are produced at this plant
next year this plant has been chosen to produce the Hybrid RAV 4

Come on, let’s take a tour. This is horse country of course and this is what you see as you approach the Visitor Center Entrance.

The Visitor Center entrance.

The Registration Desk.

There is a small display in the lobby about Toyota Racing.

Now, for the plant itself. The nice thing about this tour is you are on a tram for the full hour plus of the tour. Of course the following pictures are stock pictures from the internet but they will give you some idea of what we saw.

This is how each car begins. Raw rolls of steel delivered daily by train. Some of these rolls weight upwards of twenty tons. The raw material is then taken to a stamping station and robots stamp out the necessary parts for the cars.