Our Visit to Hyundai Motor Manufacturers Alabama (HMMA)

Today Kioshana LaCount, Fred Ragsdale and Wanda Rankin had the opportunity to visit the Hyundai Motor Manufacturers Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama. The other members of the team that visited South Korea had previously visited HMMA and did not have to attend this function. There are vast differences between the plant we visited in Ulsan, South Korea and the plant here in the United States. The plant in Montgomery is located on the outskirts of the city and has miles of open space surrounding it, where the plant in Ulsan is inside the city and surrounded by many other businesses. As expected, the plant here is more modern, most of the work here is done by robots, in Korea most of the work is done manually. We walked through the plant in Ulsan and rode on a tram through the production area here. As we rode through the plant, we observed the robots press rolled steel into the various body parts, the robots placed the different pieces of the cars into place and check to make sure everything was done correctly. The Sonata and the Santa Fe are the cars produced here in the U.S. The robots were fascinating, the efficiency with which they perform their duties can not be emulated by humans. The team members appeared to be comfortable in their jobs and interacted with the people in the tour as we passed. Our tour guide explained that each team member worked at a work station for two hours, took a ten minute break and then went back to work at another work station in order to use a different set of muscles to avoid stress injuries from repetitive use of the same muscles for extended periods. As the cars moved along the production line I was amazed to watch the cars being elevated and lowered to a position that made the team members job less stressful. The plant was extremely clean and appeared well organized. Outside I also noticed that they took good care of the grounds, there were many plants and roses which made the time spent traveling from one building to another very pleasant. The motto of Korea, "Resources are Limited, Creativity is Unlimited" can be observed at HMMA. Resources are more available in the US but this company uses these resources with great care.