Delco Regulator Assembly Line

[Page C.]

Came across this old photo of the Delco Regulator Assembly Line. It was dated April 29, 1950Delco-Remy_Generator_Regulators-.jpg

[Ed S.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

My how things have changed! Delco Remy employed 12,000 people in Indiana in 1950. Today it is called Remy International and is a global corporation. It has production operations in seven countries. According to the latest corporate annual report the US accounts for 5% of total production, Mexico accounts for 47%, Korea 24%, China 16% and the remaining 8% is divided among 3 other countries.

Regarding the of employees on the payroll, the following is a direct quote from the annual report:

"As of December 31, 2014, we employed 6,600 people, of which 1,468 were salaried and administrative employees and 5,132 were hourly employees. We had 1,121 of our employees based in the United States."

WOW! Today's US employee force is 1 tenth of what they had in 1950. Globally they only have half of what they had just in the US back then. I'll leave the "why" to others to contemplate.

[Jim S.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

Cool Picture !

Hard to believe they got that big and reduced their work force that much. However I am pretty sure everyone in that picture is now replaced by a robot .

And one more thing in regards to employees , I hope I don't get slammed on this one , but I had no idea there were that many women in the "manual" work force in 1950 ! Perhaps a carry over from the war years ?

Jim

[Ed S.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

Jim, re you comment "that many women in the workforce". Probably due to some degree to war production carryover but my guess is the main reason is the type of work that was involved; redundant, representative (is that redundant!), assembly line operations that are more suited to persons that have good hand dexterity. Those Delco Remy generators etc were not all that heavy but they did have a lot of small parts that had to be manually assembled. And I hope I don't get slammed for this but I believe studies show that females have more hand dexterity than men - generally speaking.

[Jim S.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

Ed,

That could indeed be it .

However with regard to either of us getting slammed , I want in on the record that I only said I was surprised at their number .
You are the one who said ,on a predominantly male forum , that they were better !

Jim

[Ed S.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

Guilty as charged!

Did I mention that Delco probably paid the ladies a lot less than any men doing the same thing on that production line; = greater profit.

[Steven B.]

Re: Delco Regulator Assembly Line

Thanks Page! My wife has two uncles who retired from the plants years ago. Back when I was in the USAF at Grissom AFB in Indiana I met a reservist who was the HR director for Delco in Anderson and another reservist who was in production management there. I got a tour of a couple of the facilities in the 70-71 timeframe and there was little mechanization compared to today. A lot of labor back then as in most of the period manufacturing facilities. Steve