October 01, 2013
Christopher Wynn

The General Motors Assembly Plant in Arlington is filled with cacophonous sounds. Whooshing and whirring hydraulic robot arms slice through the air with efficient grace. A conveyor system more than 28 miles long transports disemboweled SUV bodies with a rhythmic clank-clank-clank. And everywhere there is music — distinct bell tones that sound like a child picking out a melody on an electric keyboard. The notes are familiar: the Star Wars theme; “Mary Had a Little Lamb”; “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Each song snippet denotes a specific workstation that needs help or more parts in this vast, meandering place — 4.25 million square feet on 250 acres. Touring the sprawling assembly line, I make a joke about the famous five-note motif heard in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Turns out, they have that, too.

GM’s 59-year-old factory is a staggering mashup of old and new. The first car built here was a ’54 Pontiac Chieftain. The plant has been retooled many times since, but the industrial-grade restrooms have never been renovated. Today, the Arlington plant is the exclusive builder of GM’s big-dog SUVs: the Cadillac Escalade and its slightly less gussied-up siblings, the Chevrolet Tahoe, the Chevrolet Suburban and the GMC Yukon. More than 1,200 of them are built a day, in three 8-hour shifts. More than 30 percent of these Family Trucksters will be exported to customers in Russia, China and the Middle East. Indeed, electronic signs posted along the assembly line flash the occasional red-lettered affirmation: World Class Trucks! At other times, you may see the word starved, which signals a workstation on the line needing fresh parts. 

Source
Dallas News