THROW BACK THURSDAY - 001 - TMW - 2010 Factory visit with Pictures

In the first of what we hope will become a regular piece on "The Motoring World Blog", we will publish a post that we first published some while ago, so here today, in the very first "Throw Back Thursday" we will re-publish our visit to Castle Browmich Production Facility and a full tour of that plant, which included our being allowed to take a vast number of pictures, so plaese, do enjoy.

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To be offered a chance of visiting the Castle Bromwich site of Jaguar Cars, as few people know is one that you do not turn down, yes they offer visitor tours twice a day from the very modern visitor center where you will be greeted by Julie with a big smile. But to be able to go around and take as many pictures as we could, is something that does not happen that often.

"ENTRANCE "ENTRANCE TO JAGUAR VISITORS CENTER"

But to start at the beginning, a few weeks ago I received an email offering us the chance of a drive in the new XJ, as I have reported before on these forums, we have seen the XJ up close and personal on a few occasions, but without the chance of driving the car.

Now, this chance has arrived and great thanks should go to Nick for giving us this opportunity at trying out the last car in the first phase of Jaguars re-invention, first being the truly quick XK, then the XF, a car that has changed the way everyone thinks of Jaguar, gone now is the staid old image of saloon cars for 50+ executives and the retired, in has come the fresh younger sporting image, with the XKR and XFR, all three cars are specified and priced to be ultra competitive, as was always the case from Jaguar inception many years previously.

Once, after our test of the XJ, Tom, who has been with Jaguar for over 40 years, took us on the first part of the tour, we were given permission from Jaguar to take what pictures we wanted throughout the plant, and we did, over 150 of them, it seemed that we could go where we liked and we asked lots of questions which were all answered quite quickly and thoroughly. We entered the press shop where the 5 presses were pounding away, pressing the wings for the XJ, the thud as the presses push down with up to 2000 tonnes pressure on each piece of aluminium, comes through the solid concrete floors.

"ALUMINIUM SHEETS TO PRODUCE WINGS"

"5 PRESSES TO PRODUCE EACH PANEL IN ALUMINIUM"

The presses produce enough of each panel to last for about 10 days, before the next press die is installed and another set of ten days worth is produced, all in all there are about 320 dies for the XJ and there are 297 panels in the XJ alone, each press does one piece of work on the aluminium sheet before it is passed to the next where another operation is completed, by the time the panel comes out of the last press it is ready for use, nothing is wasted here at Jaguar, and the off cuts get carried away to be sent back to be recycled and reused, the factory is as near to carbon Neutral as can be with initiatives to offset any usage in the factory.

"WASTE ALUMINIUM TO BE SENT BACK AND REUSED"

Once in the grounds of the factory, walking from one block to another XJs are parked up everywhere, every conceivable colour and derivative, even the odd XF dotted about, some with some rather different “bling” alloys.

"YES CHROME WHEELS ON THIS XF DUE TO BE SHIPPED TO THE US" 

"ONE OF MANY PLACES WHERE XJ'S ARE PARKED"

The XJ takes a total of 48 hours to produce, that’s process time, excluding all breaks, weekends etc, and working to a one-shift basis, at full capacity 17,400 XJs can be produced a year again on a single shift basis, not a bad figure when you consider the XF and XK are also made on site and they do this with 2,300 highly trained and experienced staff, although I was not given any figures on cost of development of the new XJ, anywhere between 400-900 million could be the case, and when you see the end result you can see why.

"CUT AWAY XJ SHOWING ALUMINIUM IN SILVER, CAST ALUMINIUM IN YELLOW AND MAGNESIUM ALLOY IN BLACK"

The XJ, consists mainly of aluminium, 50% of which already comes from recycled metals, but it also has a small amount of steel and some magnesium alloy, this means that 90%+ of the new XJ is recyclable, something these days is a must to prove that any company believes in being ecologically aware, I am sure that Sir William Lyons would be very proud of how his company has become a force in the luxury saloon car market, and to have a very fresh and new range during this tough time in the auto market is a testament to the foresight and energy in the TATA owned company, yes the XK, XF and XJ were all under development in the Ford era, but TATA are taking it further with variants and future releases.

"XJ's ON THE TRACK AWAITING THE NEXT STAGE OF ASSEMBLY"

The XJ is partially constructed in a factory that can trace its heritage back to before the war, inside the huge building you can see that the structure is there for the duration, in fact it is so well made that the roof is strong enough to support various pieces of equipment from it, it is thought, as there are no definitive figures available that around 305 Lancaster Bombers and 11,780 Spitfires were built between 1940-1946, by the mid 50’s it was amalgamated into the then BMC (British Motor Corporation), It was not until July 1980 that Jaguar took control of the site for themselves, where XJ and XJS were assembled, then followed S-Type, XK and the XF and now the new XJ.

"IT'S AMAZING HOW SOMETHING SO SMALL MAKES SO MUCH DIFFERENCE"

As you continue the journey around the mammoth plant, you see staff beavering away at there individual stations, to see what they do you wonder if they get bored doing the same job day in day out, but they have a between 4-6 week rotational period, and are each trained on appox 4-5 different areas, meaning they get the chance to change jobs frequently, so it does not get too repetitive, robots tend to do the majority of the work on the cars in the factory but nothing can take away the experience of Jaguars dedicated team to get the fit and finish to a standard that surpasses anything that has come before it.

"MORE XJ's WORKING THERE WAY AROUND THE PLANT" 

As you continue the journey around the mammoth plant, you see staff beavering away at there individual stations, to see what they do you wonder if they get bored doing the same job day in day out, but they have a between 4-6 week rotational period, and are each trained on appox 4-5 different areas, meaning they get the chance to change jobs frequently, so it does not get too repetitive, robots tend to do the majority of the work on the cars in the factory but nothing can take away the experience of Jaguars dedicated team to get the fit and finish to a standard that surpasses anything that has come before it.

“FRONT SUB ASSEMBLY ALL COMPLETED”

Jaguar shows a great deal of faith in its workers by empowering them and allowing them to stop the line at any stage when they feel there is a problem, after all, they are the people that know the cars, and if they see something wrong, they are the ones that should bring it to the fore, get it sorted and carry on, the lines stop roughly between 50-100 times a day, I know this sounds a lot, but in the majority it is just for a second or two, once it hits around 3 minutes that’s a cars production lost for the day.

“XF CROSSING OVER EVERY 2.3 MINUTES”

“XF RECEIVING THE REAR SUSPENSION STRUT”

“AND WINDSCREEN”

Once the cars arrive at their final destination after having the computer system uploaded in the car and the fluids, they are driven off to be taken over an onsite test track with ripples, cobbles etc to see if there are any squeaks and rattles, once it passes this they go and get parked up ready for departure to which ever part of the world they are destined for.

“PAPERWORK ATTACHED TO CAR TO ENSURE NO ERRORS IN PRODUCTION”

“2011 XF 3.0D S, IN A NEW COLOUR – CAVIAR – LOOKS GREAT IN THE METAL”

“RECEVING ALL THE FLUIDS AND COMPUTER INFO”

“THIS CAT IS READY FOR DELIVERY” 

Even though Jaguar have only been at Castle Bromwich for 30 years, you get a feeling of its history from the spitfire statue on the roundabout just before you enter the site, it is home for this company, especially as Browns Lane is no more, the heart of Jaguar is in the midlands, the heritage, the present and hopefully the future, should be here, the team of workers show that they can achieve world class products, on all the cars they produce.

“SPITFIRE SCULPTURE OUTSIDE OF FACTORY GROUNDS”

Some statistics for the XJ….

Body in white Stats

• 21,622 Square meters – Total XJ body shop footprint
• 154.3 meters in total of adhesive is applied to the car in three differing types.
• 87% of rivets are automatically applied which is 18% higher than the last XJ
• 328 kilos of total weight of the long wheelbase, standard model 5 kilos less.
• 141 total inline measurement points for verification of body alignment
• 590 fasteners in total applied to the body over 40 different types.
• 110 robots, 89 Kawasaki and 21 ABB robots
• 27 laser guided cameras
• 3153 self piercing rivets, standard wheel base has 35 less

Other stats

• 2-2.5 days for the paint process
• 1.5 miles of copper wire in the XJ
• 15,000 mile service intervals
• EU5 and ULEV2 emmisions compliant

ANY AND ALL PICTURES USED IN THREAD ARE RE-PRODUCED WITH THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF JAGUAR CARS LTD AND MAY NOT TO BE USED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER AND JAGUAR CARS LTD