New Holland Factory Tour

When we drove to the Shady Maple Smorgasbord on Tuesday, we drove through New Holland, Pennsylvania and saw the New Holland factory. I checked for information and saw that they had a tour on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm. It was too late for us to find out about joining the Tuesday tour, but we called on Wednesday, and were told that we could join the Thursday 1pm tour.

We gathered in a conference room with about 50(!!) people here for the tour - there were 4 tour guides, retired employees, who were with us to provide the tour. I noticed that many (most?) of the people in the room had name tags on, so I asked the fellow next to me if he was here with a group. "Yes, the Professional Car Society... aren't you?" He was surprised that anyone *not* part of their group was along for the tour.

Heading off to the factory with our tour guide. They had wireless communication microphones and we all had headphones tuned to the number associated with our guide -- which made it easy to hear our guide and keep up while we were in the factory.

This was the invention that our guide indicated was the invention that revolutionized New Holland's future -- the automatic knotter for balers -- this is the knotter mechanism.

Entering the factory floor

One of the interesting areas was the Training Center...

Our guide explained to us that the training room uses virtual reality to allow employees to learn new skills if they want to improve their job capabilities or just become more skilled -- to learn welding, forklift driving, and using a paint bomb (spray painting, I think).

Forklift VR goggles...

Forklift simulator

Carl said he wished he could try all of those training systems!

We were asked not to take pictures of people doing their jobs on the factory floor, but Carl got a few pictures that show some of factory...

This machine was pretty amazing -- the flat stock is over to the front left, it would pick up the flat metal, and then bend it in all different directions to end up with the finished product that are stacked in the front right and center.

Much of the factory floor is occupied by robotic machines that are preparing components for the building of the machines (mainly hay-making machines) that are built here.

Baler for large round bales..

There were multiple stations down the "line" each with workers doing tasks on the putting-together of these balers.

Paint area -- the colors painted are yellow, red, and blue.

After being painted, additional assembly area.

Leaving the factory floor.

Something like this is what we saw being assembled on the factory floor.

Our guide told us that there are something like 50-100 different configurations that can be incorporated into the round baler as it is being built - include a module that will actually control the tractor, stopping the tractor automatically when the bale tying and unloading is being done.

It was an interesting tour, though I think it was a bit long for the Professional Car Society participants -- I spoke to one of them after the tour, and he confided that he had no idea what they were building -- I pointed to the picture (above) that was on the wall of the conference room, and suddenly his gaze cleared and he had more interest! I certainly didn't understand all that we had seen, but I think I understood more than many folks did...

When we had arrived at the parking lot of the New Holland plant, we had noticed a number of odd vehicles in the parking lot...

... ambulance...

... hearse...

... limousine...

... another hearse (?)...

... other "interesting" cars...

Wow - that hood alone takes up as much space in the parking space as current vehicles would!

Once we realized that the other people on our tour had something to do with cars, it made more sense...

https://www.theprofessionalcarsociety.org/

On our drive away from the factory, we saw a couple of Amish sights...

Buggy parking area at the Grocery Outlet store

Tobacco hanging in a barn

On Tuesday, we had seen a field of tobacco being harvested -- we first saw a bunch of bicycles at the end of a field, and then saw all the workers - it appeared to be women and men - in the field harvesting the tobacco. I had seen tobacco growing in other fields, and hanging in other barns - but this was the first time I had my camera out and could get any pictures!