Several years ago, the assembly plants of GM, Ford, and Chrysler used more than 300 different configurations of L-shaped blocks to support vehicle underbodies as they moved down the line for welding. Automakers and tool-and-die managers met in meetings organized by the Auto/Steel Partnership and, over time, reduced the number of L blocks used in assembly to 25, which will support 80 percent of the vehicles assembled by the Big Three. The standardization cut the average price of an L block from 30 dollars to 10 dollars and saved Chrysler, for example, 250,000 dollars on its NS van alone.
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