XXX Customer Order

[402Bowtie]

No, not that kind of XXX....

I did a search and couldn't find much info. Looking through the build date project thread at the various build sheets, I noticed that roughly half of them have "XXX Customer Order" listed in the options section.

I included two pics--one with the notation and one without the notation.

Can anyone share some insight on this? Does the notation mean the truck was custom-ordered by the dealer? Would dealers sometimes custom order trucks and not necessarily as a direct request from one of their customers?

[Keith Seymore]

It means the ultimate (ie, "paying") customer specified the option content, as opposed to a dealer ordering generic vehicles to sit on their lot.

A couple points:

a) All vehicles are "ordered". That is, the assembly plant does not create any option content or vehicle orders for production (unless they are buying them).

b) All vehicles are "sold" before the assembly plant will build them. Again, that could be either by a paying customer or a dealership, or internal GM division, but as soon as the build passes the "pay point" in the shipping building it's off the assembly plants books. The plant is very focused on making that happen.

c) All vehicles get a "Dealer Order Number". Even preproduction units ordered by internal disciplines, like Engineering or Marketing (or Assembly plant purchased vehicles for training) which presumably do not go through a dealer per se. The Dealer Order Number is what is tracked until the assembly plant PVI (Primary Vehicle Identifier), various build sequence numbers (body shop, trim, and general assembly/final) and VIN are established (in that order).

K

[402Bowtie]

Great info! I was hoping you would share some thoughts--thank you Keith!

[Keith Seymore]

A quote from a previous thread, showing the relationship between the Dealer Order number and the various build sequence numbers:

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

There is no direct linkage between the build sequence number and the sequential portion of the VIN.

The build sequence number absolutely increases one-for-one for every truck built. So at the beginning of the year you start with truck "01" and start counting, all the way to 700,000 or every how many trucks were built in that plant.

The VIN sequence portion does not increment one for one....nor are trucks necessarily built in VIN order. In my day Chevy's started with 100001 and GMCs with 500001 (and then Cadillacs with 600001); so, while within a nameplate the VINs increment up one by one but because the various nameplates are jumbled in during the day's production run the VINs do not increment up exactly one for one overall.

Let's say your daily build looked like this (I'm making this up for illustration purposes):



PVI = "Primary Vehicle Identifier" - and is the way the cab/box are identified in body shop, before the GA (General Assembly/Final Line) sequence number and VIN are even created. There are two opportunities for the build order to be shuffled: coming out of body shop into paint, and coming out of paint into trim/GA.

GA sequence number is the order in which the trucks go down the final line. Once they hit trim/final the build order is locked in.

In the example shown here the operator would write the "901", "902" etc (or even just "01", "02") on the front of dash, rather than the full "299901".



K

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

So - the purpose of the above example was to show what the "902" means.

But - there are some other nuances buried in there, that I put there on purpose, that I would like to discuss briefly:

a) Vehicle order numbers: those are real live actual dealer order numbers. That's how they look in terms of alphanumerics, and in order (all jumbled up). I've never seen any kind of rhyme or reason (or intelligence) in how the order numbers are constructed.

b) PVI - is the primary tracking number prior to GA and is established after the dealer order number is received at the plant and released for production. The vehicle cabs and boxes were built in PVI order through the body shop but shuffled going into paint, due to repair, rework or part availability.

c) GA sequence - the cab and box get shuffled again, coming out of paint before dropping into trim/final. This is again due to any repair or rework or part availability, but additionally to balance the workload for the people in trim and final. Said differently, you can't have too many air conditioning, manual trans, cab roof marker lights, dually boxes, etc (high work content) vehicles in a row. Gotta spread 'em out a bit.

d) Notice how the VINs increment up one by one within a brand. That is not always the case but I have left it that way for the purposes of this example.

e) Notice how there is a GMC every 9th or 11th job, and a Cadillac every 20th job. That was intentional. The VIN sequence reflects the production volume of that brand built, too, ie: at this point 200,000 Chevy's have been built (317388 minus 100001), but only 20,000 GMCs (521102 minus 500001) and only 10,000 Cadillacs (610101 minus 600001).

f) Those vehicle owners are for pre-production internal users. For regular production that would be the actual ultimate customer (Keith Seymore, or Bruceman, or DavisChevy, etc)

Just a reminder: on my truck the GA build sequence number was "xxxx87" but my VIN ends in "317388".

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 402Bowtie

Great info! I was hoping you would share some thoughts--thank you Keith!

Thank you; that build sequence info might be a bit of a tangent here but could be helpful for you to internalize on your Build Date project thread, too.

One caveat, though: Fremont built straight through, without the opportunity to shuffle jobs between body and paint, and again between paint and trim (which actually makes things more straightforward).

K

[70STOVEBOLT]

So my Fremont built ‘70 with vin 141858 IS the 41,857th truck built in 1969?

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

So my Fremont built ‘70 with vin 141858 IS the 41,857th truck built in 1969?

That is exactly not what I was trying to convey in Post #4.

If Fremont built Chevy and GMC down the same line (Narrator: they did) and if Fremont had a different VIN sequence than Chevrolet for the '70 model year (they did) then your build sequence number would be pushed farther and farther back from the VIN sequence based on the number of GMC's interspersed in there (about 1 out of every 9 or 10 Chevy's). The farther you go into the model year the more they diverge. Plus - that assumes the truck was released into the build process in VIN order, which is also not necessarily true (ie, the first Escalade built was VIN 002, the second was VIN 001, etc. A person wouldn't know that unless you were standing at the end of the final line when they were built).

There's no "locked in" correlation between the build sequence and the VIN, even though they are both incrementing up one by one (but according to different constraints). It's like trying to tell how fast you are going by looking at the gas gage.

Incidentally - nobody in the assembly plant cares about the VIN. It's just another part to be added, albeit correctly, like an emissions label or a Mulroney window sticker or the right tire/wheel assembly. Everybody tracking a specific vehicle is watching (firstly) the PVI and then once it hits trim the General Assembly sequence number. The GA sequence number is the "gold standard" but unfortunately is not recorded for posterity.

The VIN doesn't achieve any prominence until after the vehicle leaves the assembly plant and is released into the wild. Trying to use the VIN to determine build order right down to the one's place is assigning more meaning to the VIN than it was intended to do.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Maybe a better way for me to say it is this:

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

So my Fremont built ‘70 with vin 141858 IS the 41,857th truck built in 1969?

Surely not.

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

So my Fremont built ‘70 with vin 141858 IS the "41,000th - ish" truck built in 1969?

Sure. Why not.

K

[70STOVEBOLT]

I read post 4 but must have misunderstood post 5. I thought you were saying Fremont didn't shuffle the builds between body and paint, etc so the VINs would be sequential.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

I thought you were saying Fremont didn't shuffle the builds between body and paint,

This is true....

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

etc so the VINs would be sequential.

...also true*

(*assuming they were introduced into the build sequentially)

- BUT - only within the Chevrolet nameplate.

You've got a bunch of GMCs (with their own sequential VINs) and maybe other nameplates (with their own sequential VINs) sprinkled throughout the process messing up the relationship you are trying to create.




Take a look at this again, and compare the GA sequence with the VINs. Look at what the VINs for the various nameplates are doing:



Using your logic Order number QBNT06 would be the (317404-100001=) 217403rd vehicle built. But it's not. GA build sequence would be on #229920, or #329920, say, at that point, because the GA sequence number is what is counting up one by one, without exception.

K

[70STOVEBOLT]

I am not really concerned with my VIN, the truck is a run of the mill short bed base model so it's not worth any real money. I was just trying to understand the process, which I do now. Thank you for sharing your knowledge Keith, you are a great asset to the site.

[Keith Seymore]

Ah! You are welcome.

K

[RenoKeene]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge Keith, you are a great asset to the site.[/QUOTE]

I agree Keith, you are our own "National Treasure" and we are lucky to have you.

[sloGMC]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Take a look at this again, and compare the GA sequence with the VINs. Look at what the VINs for the various nameplates are doing:

A few questions, if you'll indulge...

For the purposes of the 67-72 build sheet, do you think block 1 "Job Sequence Number" is the GA sequence number, or block 24 "Sequence No."?
If block 1 isn't the GA number, is block 1 the PVI?
Is it safe to say that the VIN is created when the build sheet is created, and that is when the vehicle hits the "Trim/Final line"?
Do you think Block 10 "Scheduled Manufacturing Date" is more closely tied to the JSN (i.e., prior to build sheet creation/ final assembly), or the Seq No. (i.e., when a vehicle hits final assembly)?
What do you think a reasonable time was for complete production, from Body to out the door? Days or weeks?

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by sloGMC

A few questions, if you'll indulge...

For the purposes of the 67-72 build sheet, do you think block 1 "Job Sequence Number" is the GA sequence number, or block 24 "Sequence No."?
If block 1 isn't the GA number, is block 1 the PVI?
Is it safe to say that the VIN is created when the build sheet is created, and that is when the vehicle hits the "Trim/Final line"?
Do you think Block 10 "Scheduled Manufacturing Date" is more closely tied to the JSN (i.e., prior to build sheet creation/ final assembly), or the Seq No. (i.e., when a vehicle hits final assembly)?
What do you think a reasonable time was for complete production, from Body to out the door? Days or weeks?

I'm happy to indulge; in fact, I enjoy it (so thank you for asking):

Re: Block 1 vs Block 24: Not sure I can say, since I'm not seeing a Block 1 in the above photos. I will say that the build sheets can vary from assembly plant to assembly plant, so what's true for Fremont might not be true for Flint, for example. Also - I'll mention that while the assembly sequence number keeps counting up one by one, all of the digits might not be recorded. So if you were watching, you might see it go 9998, 9999, 0000, 0001, etc. Similarly, the operators don't write the full sequence on the vehicle. My truck might have been 113,887 but they just wrote "87" on the hood/front end Sheetmetal.

Re: VIN created when vehicle hits Trim/Final: no. The VIN is established and build information published well before the build starts. The cadence might be something like:
a) Dealer or customer orders vehicle - sends order to Chevrolet Central Office.
b) A day or two after that - the vehicle order number is established and the final assembly location determined (based somewhat on geography, but also on option content).
c) A day to a week after that - the order number is received in the plant and the PVI is created.
d) A day or two after that - the PVI is rolled out to create the body shop sequence number which, for plants that build straight through, the General Assembly sequence number. VIN is established at this point.
e) Indeterminate time after that (days or weeks): the build information is broadcast to all downstream users, build manifest created and printed, build sheets created and printed, and physical build started in body shop. The SPID might be printed closer to when it is installed (after body drop on Final line) but based on the same broadcast data.

As far as length of time: It depends on line rate and number of productive shifts. Flint Line #1 (pickup) was building 60 jobs/hour, two shifts; 45 jobs/hour was a more typical rate. Flint Line #2 (Blazer/Suburban) was 36 jobs/hour.

When I followed my red truck down the line in Flint I picked it up coming out of paint into trim (VIN install) at 4:30 pm on Monday (start of 2nd shift). By midnight the truck was complete and I drove it to the shipping building and left the plant by 1am. Body build (cab welding and paint) starts a couple days before that.

K