Members ventured to Altona
24 Sep 2016
It was a wet and cold day when 14 members ventured out of their Wantirna comfort zone to battle the traffic to Altona.
On arrival, they were kitted out with a Toyota jacket, a high visibility vest, a hair net, a hard hat and an earpiece to hear the commentary. They were the height of fashion—not. Being carefully led by their friendly and knowledgeable guides on a 3km walk around the plant, they started in the metal pressing shop where they were fascinated by the pressing of bonnets and boot lids by the huge Jurassic like robots.
Then they viewed the vehicles coming together with the precise spot welding of each body. In a short time Camrys and Aurions emerged from the assembly process ready for painting.
The group was able to follow cars that had been born that day through to see them driven off the line. On the day of our visit, each assembly process took no more than 127 secs. The plant has over 4000 staff and produces 407 cars per day.
It is disappointing that Toyota will cease operation in Australia at the end of 2017. An extremely interesting and worthwhile outing.
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