HAZELWOOD, Mo. -- Ten months ago, it was an impossible if not laughable proposition -- stretching Ford's St. Louis Assembly Plant to build Aerostar minivans and Explorer sport-utility vehicles on the same production line.
No one's laughing now.
The $674 million investment is giving Ford unparalleled flexibility in assembling the hot-selling light trucks.
"Every day I walk in here, it's mind-boggling what we're doing," said John Sherlock, president and chairman of United Auto Workers Local 325. "There's people on the outside saying 'You ** couldn't do this' who are starting to be believers now because it's coming together."
Early next month, Aerostars with one-piece bodies and Explorers that are assembled by attaching a body to a frame will follow each other down the same assembly line after being born in separate body shops. Ford will be able to build 50 Explorers or 50 Aerostars per hour, or any mix of the two, depending on what customers are buying.
It's a manufacturing trick few outside of Ford, which builds unibody and body-on-frame Lincoln luxury cars on the same line in Wixom, Mich., have tried.
Mercedes-Benz, for example, said it would build a second production line rather than try to do a van on the same line as its sport-utility vehicle at a state-of-the-art plant still under construction in Alabama. Ford is doing it in its 46-year-old plant in this St. Louis suburb.
Combined with other recent changes at plants in Louisville, Ky., Edison, N.J., and St. Paul, Minn., Ford can adjust production of Ranger compact pickups, Explorers and Aerostars with little fuss and, more importantly, no lost production time.
Last Tuesday, the deep blue body of an Explorer lurched along the St. Louis production line, an oddity among hundreds of Aerostars. By the end of the day, 11 more Explorers were inserted.
After each Explorer, an open slot is placed where the next vehicle would be to give operators a little more time to complete the wiring, trim and other work on the Explorer, which is more complex to put together than Aerostar. The skip is a temporary measure until everybody gets up to speed on building Explorers.
Explorers are being built for practice this week in St. Louis. Unlike the 829 vehicles built on line at the Louisville Assembly Plant before production for customers began Nov. 28, St. Louis will build only 60 preproduction Explorers before its Job One ceremony Jan. 12.
After that date, the number of Explorers built per hour is supposed to rise by one each day until the mix hits 44 Explorers and six Aerostars.
"In two months, no one will even notice this" as anything special, Mr. Sherlock said. Without the UAW's willingness to work around construction crews and to compromise on other issues, Ford wouldn't have been able to pull off the manufacturing miracle.
Ford originally planned to convert St. Louis to build only Explorers and stop making Aerostars. It was going to bulldoze the Aero- star body shop and build the Explorer shop in its place. Instead, it built a second body shop on unused space, rerouted and tore up a number of operations to make the Explorer and Aerostar bodies come together for final assembly.
Despite months of dodging construction workers and avoiding holes in the plant floor big enough to swallow a house, the 2,400 plant workers can count on better job security.
If the St. Louis plant built only Explorers and demand for them softened, workers would risk layoff with no nearby Ford plant to absorb them.
"I'm more conscious of it coming from a closed plant," said Mr. Sherlock, who transferred to St. Louis in 1982, two years after Ford closed its Mahwah, N.J., assembly plant. "I also see the error of our ways. Ten years ago, some of the stuff we're doing here would have been unbelievable."
Stuff like:
* Changing from individual work breaks to group breaks for eight weeks to allow all hourly workers to attend off-site training classes. So-called mass relief is an emotional issue in St. Louis. In 1985, Ford tried to impose group breaks on the plant and lay off all its relief workers.
"Some of my advisers, guys who don't have a boss besides the membership, thought I had absolutely lost my mind going to mass relief," Mr. Sherlock said. "I wrestled with it myself for a few days in my bargaining committee, and it was the only way we could do it."
This time, however, none of the relief workers faced being laid off. And, Ford kept its promise that mass relief would last for only eight weeks.
* Forfeiting a paid 22-week vacation. Under the original plan Aerostar production would have ended in August. Laid-off workers would have been paid up to 95 percent of their take-home pay until being called back.
Instead of drawing benefits for doing nothing, the workers have already built 85,000 Aerostars, about 60 percent of model year production. It has created at least a temporary glut of the rear-drive minivans, which sales executives have promised to move, even if it takes rebates to do it.
Having too many Aerostars is a small negative to allow Ford to create the flexibility to build it and Explorer together.
"At this point, it's very important that we maintain orders on Aerostars," plant manager Jay Richardson said. "We have to have enough orders . . . so we can get up to speed on Explorer."
Next summer, the line will be rebalanced, probably to make an equal number of Explorers and Aerostars per hour.