Plant Trek Day 4

Day 4 – Prague to Nurnberg

Today started about as well as the other 3 days of this trek. We (Mo, Jo, Jeremy, and I) went through the effort of leaving a personalized note on everyone’s door saying that we would meet at 7 AM instead of 7:30 AM so that hopefully we would not be late (as we have been on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). Apparently driving a bus around old European cities is slow. Real slow.

thought you might need a reminder about who M.C. Escher is

Everyone from LFM was up and on time for breakfast. I was so proud of the group. The problem was there was no bus. At about 6:50 AM we called the driver to discover that the bus was having suspension issues and was currently not drivable. Awesome!

it could have been worst

The driver and the tour company handled the situation well and were able to get us a bus for the day and we managed to make it to Skoda only about 15-20 minutes later than we were scheduled to start. We did have to leave our luggage in the lobby, but I don’t think anyone had a problem with missing luggage so this worked out fine.

We started the tour at the Skoda museum which details the founding of the company and a number of historical vehicles from the company’s history. Before we took the tour we heard a quality presentation from the head of design for a section of the plant. This was an interesting presentation simply because the presenter spoke little or no English so everything had to be translated by the translator we had for the day (none of our tour guides throughout the day spoke English). After that we toured the museum which was fun and had a number of really nice looking cars. I forgot my camera but other people had their camera so when I get pictures I will upload them.

After the museum tour we headed over to the factory. As was the Ford facility on Domestic Plant Trek this place was amazing. We actually got to walk down the process from the rolls of sheet metal being stamped into the body and walk the assembly process all the way to final testing. It is amazing to see all of those complicated parts come together in perfect harmony.

The stamping area was very automated and impressive to see. Sheet metal goes in on one end and comes out looking like a door on the other (the machine had a glass side so you could see all of the steps). Skoda had some interesting techniques they were using to keep track of inventory here (essentially to keep similar parts together and easy to identify). It always makes me happy when something simple is used to make a process exceptionally easier for everyone.

For example, how much better did food become when a stick was added to it? It is so simple!

Next we went to the assembly area and started to watch the car truly take shape. It is easy to compare this plant to the Ford plant we visited on Domestic and talk about how much cleaner and roomier this Skoda plant was, but that is not fair to Ford. The building of the Ford plant we visited was significantly older than the Skoda building. The big contrast that is fair to talk about is the slower speed of the line (the tact time was twice that of the Ford plant). I can’t remember all of the numbers about who was producing what, but the lines we saw all seemed to be moving at a much more relaxed pace (though Skoda had more lines here than at Ford). This is not at all to imply the operators were not moving and keeping busy. This just means that each vehicle stayed at a particular station for longer than it did at Ford.

The beginning of the assembly area was fun for the group because of all the welding. As we walked about the welding area we were constantly hit by stray sparks. We had safety glasses on for our eyes…but it is still a natural reaction to try to avoid being hit by sparks, even if they do not hurt when they touch your skin. We would all giggle when someone would get hit by the sparks and jump.

Next we were past the main welding areas we saw some of the major components coming together on side lines and then working their way into the main assembly line. Of course this was going on in the welding area (for example doors coming together or the rear, middle, and front bottom of the car being assembled separately and then combined with welds to the frame) but all the sheet metal pieces looked similar so it was difficult to really see the flow. After the welding area entire components of the car (easily recognizable, like the engine) were brought in. Again, impressive to see.

At some point we had lunch at the cafeteria (excellent as usual with as much as we could eat covered by Skoda). After that we saw final assembly and test. We asked so many questions on the tour (plus translation time) that we did not have time for our final Q&A session so at this point we got back on the bus.

After a picture back at the Skoda museum we got on our way back to Prague to get back onto our original bus (which was fixed at this point).

After what should have been a quick bio break we got under way in our original bus (and now fixed with our luggage pre-loaded). I say should have been because 3 people ran to the store and we had to wait 5-10 minutes for them…I had everyone already on the bus let those 3 people know what we thought by collectively saying “un-f***ing-believeable” when they got on the bus (they literally were running from the store). We all had a good laugh at that. Unfortunately for us we sat in a ton of traffic as we made our way out of Prague. We would have had to go through Prague even if we had not had to change back to our original bus but we could have stayed on the highway and avoided some of this traffic. Once we got on the highway it was fast moving. We had a little fun about halfway on the way to Nurnberg because once we decided to take a bio break there was not a single place to exit for about ½ an hour. Some of our people were trying not to cry. Once we found a rest stop there was much rejoicing.

Pictures of people happy to be out of the bathroom

While we were driving we all took bets on the over/under of when we would arrive at the hotel. I took the over at 9:30 PM and I should have lost…except for the highway to Nurnberg had a major traffic jam as a semi truck crashed into an overpass (we could not see it too well but from what we could see this seemed to be the problem). This also made our driver unhappy because the wreck was really close to our hotel and it was difficult to make our way to it with the road redirected. For me, taking the over was a win-win bet. If I was wrong, then we would have gotten into Nurnberg earlier than expected which is great…and if I bet correctly than I made $5 US (but paid in either Czech or Polish money). Betting with funny money feels good because it does not feel like real money.

I don't care if the Euro is stronger right now

By the time we got checked in and ready to go eat it was 10:30 and most every restaurant we found was closed. We managed to find a restaurant that would serve us (the kitchen closed immediately after we ordered because the table next to us ordered more food shortly after us and they were denied). We were very appreciative and left a nice tip (which is uncommon in the parts of Europe we have been in, usually no more than 5%).

Picture of McDonald’s and restaurant

After that we tried to find some of our friends at a bar near the train station but we could not find it so we headed home. We’ll check out the city more tomorrow after we visit Adidas.