John Z , I worked in production for 25 years and we worked 24 / 7 three shifts . Why wasn't the car companies working 3 shifts all those years? Terry
It's a long story, but running an old assembly plant that employed 7,000 - 8,000 people on 3 shifts was an enormous undertaking; most of the supply system couldn't support it, and vehicle demand wasn't stable enough to justify it on a continuing basis. Norwood ran 3 shifts for a while during the second-gen years, and it wasn't a success.
Some assembly plants run 3 shifts today to maximize utilization of capacity, but those plants and the supply/logistics systems that support them were designed to do that from the beginning.