Two factory tours and a day at the races

Here's a tale of two assembly lines.

We secured places in a tour of the Toyota assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky - their largest manufacturing facility of engines and Toyota and Lexus automobiles in America.  About 9000 people work there.  After a brief video, we climbed aboard an electrically-powered tram, put on earphones, and off we went. Our tour director drove us all over the 1300 acres of the plant, with running commentary about what goes on there.  We saw the most amazing collection of massive robots, doing all sorts of activities in picking up huge sheets of steel, moving them into position, and pressing them into automobile body parts.  Truly, it was like looking at what I imagine a Transformers movie is like.  Mind-boggling.

Then we spent a good deal of time driving between long assembly lines so we could see workers putting automobiles together.  Each worker had specific tasks to do, each of which took something less than a minute to accomplish.  Some were attaching trim parts, some were fitting the doors, one was supervising the lowering of the engine into its compartment, some were working on the interior, and so forth.  All the workers looked comfortable and unrushed, and some of them waved at us.

I found it fascinating that the speed of the assembly line depended on the number of automobiles that had been ordered by dealers.  If the demand was less that week, the time at each station might increase to seventy seconds, and if it was high, the time allowed for each process would go down to fifty-five seconds.  In other words, the hours spent on the assembly line by each worker would not change, but sometimes they would work faster, sometimes slower.

According to our tour leader, this is a much-desired job, one into which only eight of a hundred applicants is accepted.  And each employee knows upon hiring that a good deal of overtime will be mandatory.  If the number of vehicles ordered is large, each worker may stay on the assembly line an extra hour or more each day, for which of course they are paid time and a half.  So it's very good-paying work, and our leader says that it is essentially a job-for-life.

Each car takes just twenty hours to assemble, half of which is spent in painting it.  About two thousand automobiles are produced daily.  Amazing.

Truly this was a fascinating tour, one you shouldn't miss if you are ever in this area.  Unfortunately but understandably, no photos were allowed.


The second factory tour was of the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky.  Our group learned that legally bourbon must be made in the United States, and that 90% of that bourbon is produced in Kentucky.  Bourbon must be at least 51% corn mash, and rye (usually) or wheat makes up the rest.  Nothing except a limited amout of water may be added.

The distilleries age their bourbon in charred oak barrels.  Our tour group went into rooms containing many of those stacked barrels, and it smelled surprisingly similar to the commercial wine cellars I've visited.  I guess it's an alcohol-soaked oak odor.

Then we moved into the room which served as the assembly line for the Buffalo Trace Distillery.  It was somewhat lower tech than the Toyota plant. The contrast made me chuckle.

And on our last day at the Georgetown, Kentucky RV park, we went to the thoroughbred races at the Keeneland racecourse, a huge and attractive facility.

It was a cloudy day, and it had rained the previous two days, so the track was characterized as "muddy".

I learned the terminology to use when placing bets at the wagering window.  We studied the racing form - the race history of each horse, the record of each jockey, the training times - and felt confident that we had chosen some winners.  However, Maria Rose, Big Bruiser, Full of Joy, and Prom Theme all let us down and finished out of the money.  Life isn't fair.