Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

WEST POINT — Participants in the Lanett Senior Center program had the chance on Tuesday to do something they’d never done before. They took a tour of one of the world’s most technologically advanced automobile manufacturing and assembly centers in the world. And they didn’t have to travel very far to see it. It was just across the state in West Point.

A total of 25 seniors took the tram tour through Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia (KMMG) and got to see how steel coils enter the stamping shop on one end of the mammoth Kia complex and come out on the other end as a 2025 Telluride, Sorento, Sportage, E-6 or E-9.

“The seniors had wanted to do this for some time,” said Lanett Senior Center Manager Sandra Thornton. “I arranged for us to take the tour, and Kia was courteous enough to take us in, and we appreciate it so much. It was an eyeopening experience for all of us. We are so proud to have something like this going on in our backyard and providing good jobs for local people.”

There were local connections throughout the tour. As the senior buses pulled into the complex and those on the tour arrived in a reception area, two guests traveling with them had a chance to meet their son. Howard Williams Sr. and Aurilia Williams were greeted by Howard Jr., who came over from the paint shop where he works to welcome them.

As the two trams carrying the seniors were moving through the plant, a woman came over to hug Thornton. It was Cathy Bland. Fifteen years ago she was an administrative assistant for Knology. Kia was then in their first wave of hiring and Thornton helped Bland get a job there. She sent them a resume’ in her behalf. They hired her, and she’s been there ever since.

Others on the tour recognized relatives and friends among the hundreds of team members they saw while the trams were moving through, stamping, welding and assembly.

James Skipworth served as the tour guide and the trams were driven by John Freeman and Jack Cooper. Everyone wore safety glasses and listening devices so they could hear Skipworth talk about what was going on in each department the trams were slowly moving through.

Before the tour started, Skipworth talked to the group in conference room setting and showed them a short video about KMMG and its success story in West Point. Skipworth explained to them that Kia is not a johnny-come-lately company. It started out as a bicycle manufacturer in Korea in 1944. It expanded into motorcycles in 1957 and automobiles in 1963. In the early 2000s, Kia officials started looking to build an assembly plant closer to where they were selling lots of their cars. They wanted to have such a facility on the North American continent. Almost anyplace on the continent would love to have them, and fortunately for those of us in the west Georgia-east Alabama region, they picked West Point.

It made sense to do this. Kia was with the Hyundai Motors group, and they already had a very successful manufacturing plant in Montgomery, Ala. The already established supplier plants in Alabama could build parts for both companies. New suppliers would located along I-85 as well. By locating the new plant in Georgia, Hyundai-Kia would have strong political support from two states. Company executives making the 14-hour plane flight from Korea could, in effect, kill two birds with one stone on a visit to the U.S. The Kia plant in West Point would be only an our away from the Atlanta airport, and the Hyundai plant only another hour away in Alabama.

Skipworth explained how this past fall was a special time for KMMG. “We celebrated our 15th anniversary in November,” he said. “We manufactured our first vehicle on November 16, 2009.”

That car is now on display at the Kia-Georgia Training Center off Gabbettville Road. It’s a white Sorento and bears the signatures of hundreds of team members who took part in building it.

Last October, the 4.5 millionth vehicle manufactured at KMMG came off the assembly line. It won’t be long before that number eclipses the five million mark.

An estimated 3,200 team members are employed by KMMG. Thousands more work in the nearby supplier plants, drive trucks or work in sequencing needed parts.

On the tour, Skipworth explained how the steel coils go through what’s known as a blanking process to make sheets of steel. Each steel coil weighs 35,000 pounds. Each one has enough steel to make eight Tellurides. Fifty coils come through this area every day. They are cut down in panel sizes in the blanking process.

The dies in the stamping area are color coded. Orange is for Tellurides, blue for the Sorento, green for the Sportage, gray for the EV 6 and pink for the EV 9.

Four football fields could fit inside the stamping shop. Next to it is welding. Six football fields could fit in here.

The welding shop is where the robot action is. There are over 400 of them. Sub assembly stations bring together the inner and outer parts of the car body. What’s known as the main buck is an amazing sight to see. An entire vehicle is welded together in 45 seconds. “It’s exciting to see it all come together,” Skipworth said. Each vehicle body receives 2,200 welds. Seeing it can be like watching a fireworks show.

Right now, the main buck is putting together five different kinds of vehicle bodies. Kia is looking at making a sixth different one. The main buck can handle that, too.

The third stage of building a vehicle takes place in the paint shop. This is the one location that’s not on the tour. There must be absolute cleanliness in the paint shop. A single speck of dust can ruin an otherwise exquisite paint job. “We are very careful to keep out any kind of contaminant from the paint shop,” Skipworth said.

The paint shop is the largest area in the complex. It’s some three stories tall. When seen from the nearby Interstate, it’s the tallest section of the building and proudly displays the huge KIA logo. The paint shop includes 354,000 square feet of conveyors and processing equipment. A vehicle body travels over seven miles of conveyors before it exits into general assembly.

Painting a vehicle is a very complicated process involving 60 robots and three different stages. It can take up to ten hours to get it done. There’s some thorough inspection to make sure each body got that perfect coating before it goes to assembly.

General assembly is the most fascinating part of the complex for the visitor. Approximately 750 team members work here. It’s a massive beehive of activity and is absolutely mind-blowing to see it all come together. There’s much team spirit on display. Large signs display such messages as: “People are the heart and soul of our Company.”

There are multiple stations along the line. Work gets done in each station in well under one minute. There are 20 robots in general assembly. Sixteen of them were added for electric vehicle assembly. There’s some heavy lifting with the EVs. Batteries for them can weigh up to 1,200 pounds.

One feature the team members like is the wooden flooring. It’s easier to stand on than concrete.

Team members don’t do the same repetitive job throughout their shift. “We like them to know four different jobs,” Skipworth said. “They can do each one during their shift.”

KMMG has three shifts, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one at night. Meetings are held prior to each daily shift to discuss safety.

A visitor passing through the assembly center on a tram can spot Kia’s favorite colors. There are a number of different colors for the new vehicles coming off the line, and all are bright and eye-catching. The favorite ones right now are white, black and gray.

In assembly, doors are taken off at one station and put back on near the end of the line. Lots of wiring, air conditioning, seat belts, air bags, head liners, the cockpit module have to go in. The lower part of the vehicle comes in from Mobis and is married to the car body in assembly. Some of the vehicles are gas-driven models and some are electric vehicles.

The front-end module, the seats, steering wheel, tires go on in this location, and each vehicle coming together gets back the door that was taken off near the start of the line.

Each vehicle receives 60 quality checks, and at the end of the line is a place the team members call the dog house. It’s an appropriate name since that’s what it looks like. It’s here the new vehicle is started for the first time. It’s then driven out on test track to see if it checks out okay. If it passes that test, it then goes through an indoor waterfall to check for leaks. In all, there are 150 tests done to make sure each vehicle is okay.

It’s then ready to be sent to a dealership. If it stays in the Southeast, it’s transported by truck. If it goes a greater distance it goes by railroad.

How long does it take to build one vehicle? Anywhere from 21 to 24 hours. When it’s done continuously, there’s around 1,500 vehicles a day coming off the line. Each stop in assembly took an average of 51 seconds to complete.

There’s a tremendous amount of trucking activity on the Kia pad. An estimated 350 trucks are there at any point in time. An average of 750 trucks are there every day.

This kind of transportation is key in maintaining Kia’s just in time inventory strategy. Sequencing the needed parts is vital in this.

Five different kinds of vehicles are manufactured in West Point. Each one is special in its own way. West Point is the only place the Telluride is made. And they are not just in the U.S. Tellurides are now in ten different countries. That makes it special for KMMG. The Sportage has come off the line in West Point for three years now. They have been in production at other Kia plants for some 30 years. That makes it special. The Sorento was the first type of vehicle made in West Point. That makes it special. The two electric vehicles, the EV6 and the EV9, are the wave of the future. That makes them special.

Kia is very much focused on giving back to the community. More than $22 million in corporate gifting has benefited organizations such as the United Way, the American Cancer Society and Harmony House.

Skipworth sees lots of youngsters on the tours he conducts and loves it. “Forty percent of our tours are school groups,” he said. “This is our future. It’s so good to see them, and they can ask the best questions.”