By Mike Boyer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Gary Niebling lowers a transmission at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Sharonville. A celebration Sunday marks Ford's 100th anniversary. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

One of the largest celebrations outside Detroit marking Ford Motor Co.'s 100th anniversary happens Sunday in Sharonville.

"We're proud of our long history here," said Gary Alexander, a United Auto Workers Local 863 representative at the plant and co-chairman of the event, which includes plant tours, classic cars, food and music.

"You only get to be 100 every now and then, and we won't be around to mark the next one," he said. The celebration will involve a couple hundred volunteers.

Cincinnati has played a key role in the history of the nation's second-largest automaker, which marks its centennial with five days of activities at its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters June 12-16.

• In 1909, Cincinnati was one of the first cities in which Ford set up a branch sales-and-service office, using a four-story building at 911 Race St. downtown. In 1915, fueled by growing demand for the Model T, Ford opened one of its first regional assembly plants in a six-story, reinforced concrete building at 660 Lincoln Ave. in Walnut Hills. (The vacant building now is being converted into offices.)

• In 1950, Ford began producing its first automatic transmissions - three-speed Fordomatic and Merc-O-matics - at a new plant on Red Bank Road in Fairfax.

Ford set up operations here because of the area's machine tool expertise and available skilled labor, said Thomas "Pat" McCaffrey, one of the first employees at the Fairfax plant who later served as plant manager at Fairfax and Sharonville before retiring in 1990.

CINCINNATI MILESTONES

The Ford Motor Co., founded June 16, 1903, has had a place in Cincinnati history for 94 years. Here are some milestones: • 1909: Ford establishes a branch office to sell and service the Model T in a four-story building at 911 Race St. The branch later became a regional office for Ford Credit and is on the National Register of Historic Places. • 1915: Ford opens one of its earliest assembly plants outside Detroit at 660 Lincoln Ave. The six-story, reinforced concrete building designed by noted industrial architect Alfred Kahn, was used by Ford for vehicle assembly and service until it was sold to Sears Roebuck Co. in 1940. Also on the National Register of Historic Places, it's being remodeled for office space. • 1921: Ford operated a plant on Fifth Street in Hamilton producing wheels and other components until 1950. • 1950: The automaker opens its first automatic-transmission plant on Red Bank Road, Fairfax. The three-speed Fordomatic and Merc-O-matic transmissions were introduced on Ford's 1951 models. • 1958: To meet increased demand, Ford opens a second automatic-transmission plant off Sharon Road in Sharonville on site of an airport owned by industrialist Powel Crosley Jr. • 1979: Ford closes the Fairfax plant and the following year opens a 1.8-million-square-foot plant in Batavia to build front-wheel-drive transmissions. • 1985: The Sharonville plant, which had been slated to be shut down, gets a new lease on life when the company and the United Auto Workers agree to implement the first team-based management system at Ford. Last year, Ford began production of a new five-speed automatic transmission at Sharonville after an $81 million investment, the latest of several new products . • 1998: Ford agrees to sell a controlling interest in the Batavia transmission plant to German-based ZF Industries, which next year will begin producing new, more efficient continuously variable transmissions for several new Ford models.

IF YOU GO

More than 300 antique cars and motorcycles, food and games and plant tours will be featured at the Sharonville Transmission plant Sunday to mark Ford Motor Co.'s 100th anniversary. The event is open to the public and is expected to draw more than 5,000, to the 2.7-million-square-foot plant at 3000 Sharon Road. It will run from noon to 5 p.m. Most of the activities are free, but proceeds from food and beverage sales will be donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Besides kids games and a dunking booth, plant employees will be performing various types of music during the day.

• In 1980, Ford's new 1.8-million-square-foot Batavia plant was one of the first U.S. plants to build front-wheel-drive transmissions. Next year, the plant, now jointly owned with Germany's ZF Friedrichshafen AG, will become the first high-volume U.S. source of continuously variable transmissions, a new, more-efficient transmission for Ford and other vehicle makers.

• In 1985, the Sharonville plant was to have been shut down when the company and UAW joined forces to make it the first Ford plant in the country to attempt the then-novel concept of team-based management.

Combined, the Sharonville transmission plant, which makes transmissions for such varied models as F-series pickup, the Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln LS; and the ZF Batavia plant, which makes front-wheel-drive transmissions for the Ford Escape, Mazda Tribute and other models, employ 3,400.

Management shift

The ups and downs at the Sharonville plant, which opened in 1958, are a microcosm of the U.S. auto industry in the last half of the 20th century.

Opened in the heady postwar boom years for the Big Three, the plant once employed more than 5,000 producing automatic transmissions for many of Ford's best-selling cars and trucks.

But a rising tide of imports and recession in the early 1980s took its toll, and employment at the 2.7-million-square-foot plant dwindled to about 1,500.

Alexander, a UAW job security representative, was laid off for 31/2 years in the early 1980s.

"I never thought I would be back" said Alexander, who now has 26 years at the plant.

That's when management and union leaders came together on the team-based management approach.

It replaced the traditional "command and control" management style in which supervisors gave orders and workers followed them, with work teams handling production and quality problems, scheduling and team-member discipline with supervisors as advisers.

To implement the changes, Ken Seyfried, a labor relations coordinator at Sharonville, said the union and company agreed to replace 50 different manufacturing job classifications with one. It also implemented a "pay for knowledge" system, under which employees were paid more the more jobs they learned.

To complete the transition, all the employees received 40 hours of team-building training and 80 hours of technical training, he said.

The move from confrontation to collaboration wasn't always easy, Seyfried said, "but the plant facing closing opened a lot of eyes."

The team-based management was a key factor in the plant winning a new electronic four-speed transmission product line in the late 1980s.

Last year, the plant, which employs 2,200, turned out more than 3,500 transmission a day, added a new five-speed transmission line while also producing 7,000 gear sets and other components daily for other transmissions.

Family feel

The Sharonville plant, which hasn't had a labor strike since 1976, has a lot of family feel, employees say.

"People were empowered to make decisions," Alexander said. "And they felt good about their jobs."

McCaffrey, who worked at Sharonville and the old Fairfax plant, starting at $1.375 an hour in 1950, said it was the employees who made the difference.

When the Fairfax plant was closed in 1979, he said, "You wouldn't believe the number who cried who had worked there 20 or more years. It was an emotional thing."

Added Alexander: "This is a family operation. We have third and fourth generations of the same family working here."

Jim Brooks, who worked more than 40 years at Sharonville, said: "A lot of that started with old Henry (Ford). Ford always felt the best source of new employees were relatives of existing employees."

E-mail mboyer@enquirer.com