Case East Moline Plant 1996

Описание: From a local news article:

This past August, 570 employees of the CNH Global Case-IH plant in East Moline, Ill., assembled the last Big Red combine before the plant closed.

The East Moline plant started in 1927 as a single storage building housing Farmall tractors made in Rock Island until they could be shipped throughout the country. The complex grew into a manufacturing center. Threshers were built there beginning in 1934.

At its peak, the plant employed 4,300 workers on three shifts, producing 40 to 50 combines a day. Corn pickers, grain headers, farm elevators, corn heads, corn shellers, field choppers, blowers, forage harvesters, and mowers were among other products made there.

Moline Plow Co. sold the original property to International Harvester Co. for $90,000 in November 1926. Harvester built the first warehouse there, then expanded the complex into a farm-equipment factory.

The East Moline plant remained in IH hands until 1985, when IH farm-equipment assets were sold to Tenneco Co. and became part of the J I Case farm-equipment subsidiary later known as Case Corp.

In 1999, Case and New Holland merged to form CNH Global. In June 2000, CNH officials said they would close the East Moline plant and transfer the combine assembly to a Grand Island, Neb., facility. It's newer, more efficient--and non-union.

CNH plans to sell the East Moline complex.

Although the East Moline plant's closing is "sad," retired manufacturing engineer William Gibbons says he's surprised the factory lasted as long as it has. He says plant managers and engineers had talked about what to do with the aging complex for decades. Its low ceilings made production costly compared to modern manufacturing processes.

East Moline trucked components from one station to the next because of the low ceilings and used more people in the process. Modern manufacturing systems use overhead conveyor systems.

When the last combine rolled off the line, many of the remaining 570 workers retired with 30 or more years of service. Others collected their benefits and thought about starting over.

The closing also means that, with the exception of an engineering center in Davenport, Iowa, more than 70 years of Farmall, International Harvester, and J I Case presence in the Quad-Cities comes to an end. (Moline Daily Dispatch, Aug. 20, 2004

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