The River Rouge Manufacturing Complex.
...ture all components of the cars without having to ship parts to or from other locations in the country. The next collection of photographs is of the exterior of the Rouge plant. These photos were obtained from the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. These pictures are of the Rouge during the switch of all production, from the Highland Park plant, to the Rouge. It was also the time that the Model A was beginning production. This collection shows examples of four exterior views of the plant, allude to the many different factories within the Rouge plant. The Rouge was a steel mill, a foundry, a power producer and, an assembly line. This all encompassing idea helped ford relegate all aspects of the production of their product. Along with the exterior, the interior showed the extent of the all encompassing Rouge plant. The interior photographs, which were also care of the Henry Ford Museum, show more factories within the factory. For example, the four photos in this collection display metal forming, and metallurgical operations. These pictures included forging, the blast furnaces, removal of slag and, even salvaging scrap from metal ships. The interior had two collections to view and the second reaffirmed what the first portrayed. The second collection displays more metal working production including the hydraulic shear, which was used for sheet metal, the open hearth ladle and the hearth building. These photos gave an impressive direction of the inner workings of the Rouge plant. As said before the Rouge was the largest manufacturing complex in the nation when it was built. An aerial photograph of the plant reaffirms that fact. The photo was taken in 1930 and you can see by the photo the plant is very impressive. The caption that accompanies the picture gives an actual figure of the Rouge's square footage, the total is 6,952,484 square feet. Before the Rouge plant Ford's main manufacturing plant was Highland Park. The Rouge and Highland Park were similar in the way of utilizing the assembly line to produce the Ford product. Many collections of photos were found of the assembly line at Highland. One collection shows the final mating of the model T, which is similar to the final mating of the model A . Also the one day production of the Highland Park plant, which was dwarfed by the Rouge one day production total. The next collection of Highla...