Harley Davidson factory tour

Took a tour of the Harley Davidson factory in York PA today. It was an insiders tour as part of a manufacturer's counsel. If you haven't been there recently, they undertook a multimillion dollar update and renovation of the facility since 2010.

It is now an incredibly modern and advanced production facility. I've been in a lot of factories worldwide, and this is truly in the top five. They use the latest in lean manufacturing and just in time production, process improvement and quality control, robots and automation, and modular production cells. It is impressive.

Even more impressive are the people. To a person, they care about quality and the Harley way. You can just see that they all care deeply about what they are making and they treat each bike like it was their own.

And the bikes. Oh man the bikes! The 2014 models are gorgeous. They make the Soft Tails, Touring, Trikes and CVO bikes. They all commingle on the same production line, each bike that passes is different from the last. And even though they use laser-guides robots for welding and some pin striping, there are still people hand-lining tanks, slikscreening and welding certain things. If it needs to be custom or specialized, a craftsman does it by hand. So cool.

With or without the Harley mystique, it is a great example of how good Made in America can be. I can't wait to ride, and I can't wait to buy my own Harley someday.

I've driven by that factory many a time but have never taken a tour. Might be something to remember this summer.

I came away with the same impression at their KC plant.

They have two different tours for Joe Q public visitors. The free one, and the paid for steel toe tour. I've done the public tour, which didn't seem very much different from the steel toe tour that was running at the same time.

Don't know what the insiders tour is. Here's to hoping you went into more areas than we did.

Fun plant, fun tour. Interesting and educational.

Last time I at the York, PA plant a few years ago they had a station with a clown pounding on pistons with a hammer. When he was happy with it he would set it in the 'already been wacked into shape' bin and move on to the next one. Hopefully they worked out their QA issues.

Hmm. Since they don't do engines at the York plant, color me skeptical of the story.