General Motors
announced to concentrate its engineering resources. In the future,
that means within the next 3-5 years, General Motors will focus
on 3 product development centers and 8 local engineering centers.
Therefore a budget of nearly $ 1.5 billion is foreseen.
Almost $ 900 million
will be invested into the Warren Center, Mich., which will be
the home of 16,000 engineers and technicians.
About $ 170 million
will be spent for the Pontiac truck engineering faculty, Mich.
A $ 200 million will go into the consolidated power train engineering
in Pontiac as well.
The GM Technical Center was designed by architect
Eero Saarinen and was built in 1950. Occupying 330 acres,
its 25 buildings including gatehouses, large laboratories,
offices and shop buildings, are arranged along three sides
of a 22-acre lake.
General Motors Technical Centers
The
one-square-mile complex of engineering facilities is located 12 miles
north of Detroit, Michigan. The Technical Center is the workshop
for GM engineers, researchers, stylists, designers, mechanics, machinists,
and other specialists. Although each GM division conducts most of their
own short-range research and engineering projects in-house, a high percentage
of the work done by the Technical Center is initiated on request of
the divisions. At the Center, the research and engineering projects
are conducted over an extended length of time. Engineering staff projects
generally look ahead at least three to five years while research projects
extend even further into the future.
In addition, the Technical Center handles
programs that would be uneconomical or beyond the resources
of individual divisions. All styling and design of products
is handled exclusively at the Technical Center in individual
brand character groups.
