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CORVETTE TODAY #62 - Meet Kai Spande, The Plant Manager at the Corvette Assembly Plant
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May 9, 2025
On this episode of CORVETTE TODAY, you get to meet the Corvette Plant Manager for the Bowling Green Assembly Plant, Kai Spande! Your host, Steve Garrett, introduces you to Kai as he traces his career with GM. Kai talks about how the Bowling Green Assembly Plant transitioned from the front engine, C7 Corvette, to the mid-engine C8 Corvette. You'll get insights on the plant expansion and how they made that all happen...giving the new C8 Corvette a true state-of-the-art build facility. Kai also tells you about the Corvettes he has owned and the funny story of how he loved Corvettes, but never thought he'd get to work for it during his tenure at GM. Get to personally know Corvette Plant Manager, Kai Spande, on this episode of CORVETTE TODAY!
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0:00
[Music] welcome to corvette today
0:05
the podcast that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette
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weekends in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri
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and radio disc jockey at the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
0:28
thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate
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welcoming corvette owners from around the world my guest on corvette today is the plant manager
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for corvette's bowling green assembly plant his 30 years plus with general motors has taken him in leadership roles
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from ohio to new york to japan and even germany he became plant manager for corvette in
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august of 2015. he is mr kai spandy kai welcome to
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corvette today well thanks for inviting me steve i really appreciate it i'm glad to have you here
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kai in segment number one let's talk about your early years i know that you graduated from the university of
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northern iowa with an industrial technology degree in 1991 and then just jumped right in with gm
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that same year talk about the jobs that you've done with gm leading up to where you are today at the bowling green
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assembly plant yeah i'm probably a little bit of a rarity in the vehicle assembly plant
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genre within the company because i started my career actually working in foundries so i
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worked my way through a number of different roles in engineering sometimes supervising on the
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floor and in quality and then kind of found my way into a fellowship with the united states
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department of commerce that got me a year working for a japanese company in japan and then various roles in many
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different locations that accumulated into a directorship role for
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casting processes and then from there went into plant management for casting facilities
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component facilities for engines and then engine plant leadership and then program
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management and then my last stint before coming to bowling green i was actually responsible for all the
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powertrain dyno and development facilities in both russellheim germany and tour in italy or torino
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italy depending on where you're from how that's pronounced so i've been kind of north and south and east and west
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geographically and then organizationally from foundries to components to engines to manufacturing and product engineering
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across the globe and now in vehicle manufacturing that's amazing it had to be a fun tour abroad
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as a matter of fact let's talk a little bit about that because in germany you were responsible for overseeing a
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1.4 million upgrade over there talk a little bit about that because that had to be a nice precursor
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for when we expanded the bowling green plan didn't it yeah it was actually a huge expansion we built
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a new building that housed dynamometers so in product engineering this is in
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powertrain this is where you build prototype engines and then you get them on tests meaning that you're burning fuel
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trying to find out what is going on with them and especially in the european case the level of sophistication is
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always increasing as it is around the globe and we were charged with putting in
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all new dynamometer facilities to do both engines transmissions engine and transmissions together as a
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unit powertrain operations that would include climactic meaning you could take the
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dyno cell to very cold levels or very hot and then also atmospheric so you could simulate
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basically being at pikes peak in the dead of winter very extreme conditions so we built that facility
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which is there and running today and that was a huge project it was actually almost a half of a billion
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dollars of investment so yeah my career has been based upon lots of different large-scale
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projects in my past and so that was the most recent one before coming to bowling green
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that's very cool now tell me the truth kai is bowling green like your dream job for general motors
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you know i got to tell you a story a long time ago this is like 25 years ago before i went to japan
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i had a chance to study at vanderbilt for a few months to prepare myself to go to japan from a language
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standpoint and i drove by the bowling green assembly plant and i'm being a hundred percent honest i looked
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over to my right driving south on i-65 and i thought i don't even want to stop there because
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i know that i'll never be working there at that time i was 23 years old or 24
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years old it was a dream that it was so far away it was that apple on top of the tree that you just don't
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even try to go get and now that i find myself here i'm very very happy so what was unobtainable at
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one point then with a lot of hard work now is my reality that's a great story kai and c
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it all came true that's fantastic yeah that's awesome hey would you like
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to finish your career with general motors there at bowling green well i would take it one step further in
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the question that you have steve i honestly can say and and i'm not making this up every job that i've ever had i've
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found a way to enjoy myself and thrive in the teams that i have a chance to work with
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whether i'm making an engine or testing an engine or building different things i've always
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found that it's rewarding being with a fantastic team and i have that exact
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experience here in bowling green what is in addition to that level of
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let's just say affirmation or rewards associated with the work that you do
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is obviously the product that we make and and the product that we make for everybody that's listening to this
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we all know that this is the most fantastic car on the planet so i have to say i'm happy with all the
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jobs i've ever had and i'm extremely happy with this one too i'm just happy i pinch myself that
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i'm a part of making history here in bowling green absolutely right my friend hey i know that you're a
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corvette guy and i know that you love big block corvettes talk about the corvettes that you've owned and what's currently
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in your garage right now yep so the history with me and corvette some know some may not but i bought a
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corvette that was the first car that i bought when i started working for gm it wasn't a new car so in chronological order dating back
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decades was the 78 silver anniversary i've always had a history of working on cars
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too i put my hands on them and i always make them better that's what happened with the next car i bought it was kind of a basket case 1965
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convertible i learned a lot with that car because i did a complete frame off restoration with that car
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wow and i actually put a big block in it it didn't have a big block when i got it but it did before i was done with it
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and then i had a 69 l71 so that was a 435 427 another big block that was a super
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cool car and then i had a 99 and then my daughter was born in 99 so
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we know how that works changed and then there was a little bit
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of a gap in there from a corvette standpoint but then getting back to bowling green now that affinity has continued just
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recently i sold a 73 that my son and i took about a year to kind of restore
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and get back in some really good shape i found somebody that was very interested in buying that and i sold that one
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and then i bought a 1999 a great car that i found in your neck of the woods and now that's kind of a father-son
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project my son considers it more his than mine which is great because as one of my goals is to continue
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kind of the corvette tradition within the family very very nice well kyle let's take our first break and
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for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve garrett
12:01
with me today is plant manager for corvette in bowling green kentucky mr kai spandy kai in segment number two
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let's talk about the bowling green expansion that you guys just did you oversaw a 439 million dollar
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450 000 square foot expansion to the plant talk about all the coordination it took
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to get that job done yeah it was fantastic and i kind of like to tell these stories when i stepped
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foot into the bowling green plant in 2015 my predecessor said hey there's this little thing that's going to be
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happening in a couple of years with a new car and you might want to pay attention to
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that and i'm thinking to myself well i'm kind of an information overload what can another project be no big deal
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and then i started living it a little bit more it's like oh my gosh we're going to tear everything up in this factory and the
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number that you quoted 440 million that was only the paint shop then we have general assembly and now we have a new
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body shop it's knocking on a billion dollars over 900 million dollars we've spent in preparation for the c8 it's literally
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been an exercise in replacing i don't have a specific percentage
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target i'm going to say 98 of all the infrastructure that we had for c7 has been taken out and either
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modified or replaced to support the c8 production that's amazing talk about some of the
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biggest improvements in this expansion like the paint shop and the body shop and things like that yeah so
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let's just start with paint and i would take the time to give shout out to chuck valentini our paint shop manager
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he was in charge of running the old shop and then orchestrating the new shop and the thing
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about the new shop that we have it is not a standard process that we have within general motors
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this is a one-off factory for painting corvettes that exists in no other location and
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there's a couple reasons for that number one we paint the panels of the corvette off of the car all other cars or metal bodied cars are
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painted all pre-assembled so that's one difference the second difference is that we're painting composite parts so we're not
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painting metal that creates another challenge and then the third one is that we want to have
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the absolute best possible finish on the car due to the nature of our corvette
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customers they deserve the absolute best and the accumulation of the challenges that were faced some
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of the technologies that we put in gave us the ability to have an absolute
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no question world-class finish on our core bets so everything went really well with the
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expansion didn't it yeah it really did we and i would say that we started production of the 2020 stingray
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the c8 in february of last year in 2020. a majority of the infrastructure for the
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paint shop actually came up at the end of 2017. right so the new paint shop was painting d7s and
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then c8s in that order and there was a reason for that the reason for that is that we didn't want to have to start
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everything for this new car all at once so that was the strategy take and get the paint shop online up
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and running and painting at that time d7 and then introduce the c8 to it
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therefore reducing the risk at the launch meanwhile we're building a body shop that came online
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about a year later but at that same time in 2017 we took about an eight or nine week time
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frame and we tore our general assembly apart why did we do that what was the challenge the challenge was this
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we needed to make the c8 on the line that the c7 was being
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manufactured on so we had to replace everything so we had to put in place a long-term plan
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for our current car that had the ability to make the previous car so making both of those on the line at the same time i remember
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a day where we had 17 model year 18 model year 19 model year and the prototype 2020
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in the factory on one time and that was yeah it was a little bit of a mind-blowing
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point in time and not that those don't always exist but it was fun that's got to be crazy kai at
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the very end now with building the c8 was there much of the c7 line left intact after you were transitioned
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into c8 no nothing well the paint shop stood but it was intentionally designed for the c8
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so then that would maybe be taken aside the body shop for the c7 is completely gone we tore it apart we
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had to completely replace it we could not co-produce the c7 and have any idea on how we could modify
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it for the new car and then general assembly was completely reconfigured so when we get to the point when people can
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come back in and see inside our factory the final line where the cars are started for the first time that
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very short conveyor still exists the tow input or where we do wheel alignment
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still exists and dvt still exists those are really the only three
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let's just say monuments that exist everything else on how we assemble the car was changed it was literally wiped clean
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and replaced in those short amount of weeks that's amazing especially when you tear everything apart
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and start fresh with kind of a clean slate rebuilding it from almost scratch has got to be a huge huge
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undertaking yeah yeah i don't even really know what words to describe it
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and then the expectation is that we come back up when we came back up in the end of 2017
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we not only had a brand new process but we slowed the line down considerably meaning all the jobs
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changed from a training standpoint and we brought the new paint shop online
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immediately so that we were feeding that line with panels only from the new paint shop we
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did not want the two to mix old shop to new shop the level of coordination was just absolutely fantastic and i give
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credit to everybody in this factory that had a piece in that because we knocked it out of the park that's amazing talk about quality
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control kai i know that with the c8 and with the new mid-engine infrastructure quality control had you had to up your
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game with that didn't you yeah so in the last year of our c7 production
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our factory achieved what we call biq4 which is built in quality four and
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this means that we have an organization that has taken quality to the enterprise level
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that means that we not only have the ability to control our operations inside our
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factory but we're also outside of our factory meaning our supply base and we are using the resources that we
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have in engineering also to come to the party and we achieved that in our efforts with
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c7 and that really created the springboard for us to move into this new car the new car has its own
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specific challenges and i'm happy to say that go find one and go find a customer
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what you're going to find is smiles i i get emails multiple times a week about customers who are very happy in fact a
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little story i walked outside today it's a beautiful sunny day in kentucky
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and there happened to be a customer with his car right up near the front of the building i was on my way to an appointment and i
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took the opportunity to talk to this guy and he was just unbelievably happy with the car so we've
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done in my opinion a really good job from a quality standpoint making sure that we're delivering what our customers
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expect and that's a world-class product my friend you have done an outstanding job with this car
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going from a front engine platform to a mid-engine platform takes a lot of doing and everybody that i know
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that has a c8 grins ear to ear so compliments to you and everybody at bowling green i guess
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we couldn't do a show or a podcast without talking about your assistant plant manager
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nora roper nora is a wonderful woman talk about your relationship with nora and how you both
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complement each other's work you know what's really interesting i'm going to go back to august of 2015
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when i came here ironically when i was the plant manager of the romulus engine plant in michigan
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nora was the assistant manager there wow and he was also the quality manager
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there for a period of time so when i walked into the bowling green plant i knew a number of people that were on my staff
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from previous column lives and nora was one of them and i was absolutely happy that i
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had the privilege to work with such a qualified dedicated individual nora and i are a fantastic
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team and we have a fantastic staff here too so i don't want to take anything away
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from any others but nora is an example of an absolute professional she has not only the manufacturing
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operations so all areas of the plant report to her so general assembly
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body shop paint shop in addition to that all engineering organizations report to her as well as
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the maintenance organization so she has a very large responsibility in this manufacturing facility
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and i would say nothing but absolutely the best regarding her ability to get that job
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done with absolute professionalism kai let's take our final break and in segment number three we're going to talk
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this is the corvette today podcast with steve garrett
23:02
thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette i'm your host steve garrett with me
23:08
today mr kai spandy the plant manager the bowling green assembly plant in bowling green kentucky
23:14
the home of corvette in this third segment we're going to talk a little bit more about the new mid-engine c8 corvette
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kai moving from a front engine platform to a mid-engine platform takes a lot of doing
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talk about all the months and months of planning and preparation you had to have in order to convert the plan over to the
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mid-engine platform yeah you know it's an interesting topic steve that maybe a number of people might not even have
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any idea about how do you even do that and how we do that it starts in our plant
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i have a rule as it relates to project implementation there's a couple fundamental rules there's no inventions on the critical
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path there's no rookies that are on the launch team the list goes on and on these are the things that i've learned over years and
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years and years and the best way that you can describe it is that you have to take the best people in your organization
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and you have to give them the opportunity to start studying the challenges associated with the task at
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hand this is coupled also with many systems and processes that we have within our
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company so we have structured processes saying that before start of regular production
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20 weeks before you should be doing this and you should be doing this and you should be doing this so when we couple great talent with the
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systems and processes that we have in our company based on the experience of launching new cars we get this result
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that is very very powerful so what are the specific challenges that we have ironically all those things that i just
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mentioned the best people we have them we put them in the project and we're not talking two three four
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people we had a launch team and we still have many of those intact we have 50 60 70 people that are helping
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make sure that the launch is going the way that we want it they're dedicated to these operations
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that's what we did however there's not a real good rulebook on creating the world's
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newest supercar that has an engine behind the driver so unfortunately many of the systems and
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processes that we have we had to modify because they just maybe didn't apply perfectly to the creation of this
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new fantastic car so early and often we had a tremendous amount of reviews we had a
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lot of people up in michigan looking at the car understanding how it goes together we have fantastic industrial engineers
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that figure out how to layer all of this work together you can imagine the hundreds and thousands of
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pieces of this car that have to go together to just make that happen is mind-boggling and
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that is the challenge of this launch team along with our engineering team how can you build it with quality with
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productivity in a safe manner it has to be a monumentous task and you guys have done it with flying
25:56
colors it's just been absolutely fantastic also kite during the pandemic i know that there's a lot
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of measures taken just to make sure that all the employees at bowling green are safe talk about some of those things
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as you integrate those with transitioning from a front engine platform to a mid-engine platform
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this time last year the world was a different place for sure i'm very proud to say that our company
26:19
general motors led many aspects of the industry or really just the business world
26:25
and developing the counter measures required to get people back to work safely many companies took what we did as a
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template and copied them and i'm very happy to say that they have made our employees safe over the last months
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we have had individuals that have experienced covid personally however their exposure has always been
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somewhere outside of our factory so we provide a very safe operation here where we are checking
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temperatures of everybody coming in we're providing hand sanitizer and of course masks are required
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in all aspects of our operation so this has been the key to us maintaining the capacity if we had
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a problem we could lose very key individuals that are helping build this car so we look at the idea of protecting
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people's lives also protects their livelihood and this was really the mantra that we had a long
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time ago it was a big challenge if you remember a year ago it was a big challenge that the world was going
27:24
through and we slogged through it and now while we've still faced our own individual
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challenges i can say that the health and well-being of our people has been protected absolutely that's
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great to hear too kai let's talk about some of the work stoppages that you guys have experienced
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and how that affects the assembly plant i look back and the challenges that we
27:46
had starting with the strike with the uaw and then we got this factory off the
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ground in february 3rd of 2020 we ran for nine weeks and then we shut the
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factory down for the same number of weeks and then we came back to work and we had all of our own struggles
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i would tell you that any rule that's out there for what situation is optimal for launching a new car we
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have broken all of those rules not by anything that we've done by the situation that we found ourselves in so
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i really at the risk of diverting the question here i would like to take the opportunity to
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make sure everybody recognizes that the people inside this factory are working on a daily basis to do one
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thing and one thing only and that's to make these cars in the best quality and productive way
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that we know how for all of our customers that's absolutely the case we come to work and that's what the
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result is these cars moving out the back of the factory to our customers well you've done a fantastic job kai
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it's kind of like okay let's start a revolutionary new car and let's throw in a strike and then
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let's throw in a pandemic and see how they deal with it you know it's just been absolutely incredible the story behind
29:00
the mid-engine corvette has been really really amazing and you throw in the pandemic you throw in
29:05
strikes you throw in part shortages you throw in chip shortages and you guys have still made this thing
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work and work well yep you know what it means to me is that no matter how you want to measure it
29:17
and this is kind of an interesting twist here whether it's corvette racing whether it's the corvette assembly plant
29:23
whether it's the corvette engineering team it doesn't matter what gets put in front of us we find a way to go out
29:29
and finish on top and that's the winning attitude that everybody has coming
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to this factory up in michigan with the engineering team etc etc etc we just are driven
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we want to make things happen and that's what we do and it shows you make a quality product that is world-class
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and that's for sure and that's just my personal opinion but you know what my personal opinion is the same i echo
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many many people so kai talk about the assembly line when you're talking about coupes versus hardtop convertibles right
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how does that differ you know how does that work when you're building a coupe and building an htc
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well this goes back to our manufacturing engineering and our industrial engineering how do we
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set up those systems and our goal for many aspects is to make the ability
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for us to build a coupe or a convertible seamless in our operations and even
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going back into the paint shop where we have to paint these different kind of panels and we have different colors
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and at the risk of expanding your question a little bit some people may but most don't know that we lock our
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schedules three to four weeks ahead of production meaning i could tell you in three weeks the car
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that would be produced on any given day or at least in sequential order wow and that's something that is very
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very different so when i paint a car or the panel sets for a car i know that it's a convertible i know
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that it's red mist i'm actually looking outside of my car right now which happens which is a fantastic color by the way
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and then that starts moving through the factory it goes into the body shop and then the door ring is put on and then
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what you were specifically talking about then what has to happen in the assembly process that's different between coupe
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and convertible we have stations in our line that in this case are dedicated to
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the retractable hard top and that retractable hard top it all comes pre-assembled the panels are painted and
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it's kind of stacked together neatly in a giant bundle we have some space on the line that's
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dedicated for the installation of that hardtop convertible and that's what it's used for so
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if a coupe is coming down the line then that space is not utilized however from a
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productivity standpoint we can't just have people waiting for a convertible to come down the line so
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our challenge is how do we balance all of the work so that the individual that is responsible for
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or individuals responsible to get that retractable hard top put on they also have work when the coupe is
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coming down the line and that is the real trick because there isn't a separate conveyor
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that convertibles go down all cars go down the exact same line and not just hard top convertible or coupe
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they have to also handle all the other variations the 104 different seats and
32:20
all the different options which all come to the line in sequential order material wise it's mind boggling the
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amount of combinations that can be built with this car and it is magic to make sure that we build the
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cars absolutely correctly every time that's amazing kai let's get personal here i know that you drive one every day
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but is there a c8 in kai spandy's future and if there is if you purchase one what
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would your spec be well let me tell you a little bit of a story i was one of the first people that got
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this red mist i would have to admit i've got a number of different cars you know what i got to
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go back here i forgot probably the coolest car that i have corvette that i own i have a 66 427 425 horse four-speed car
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that actually is sitting over at the museum now on display wow that's a fantastic car but you're
33:12
talking about what car would i buy i have to be honest i probably wouldn't buy a car right now because
33:18
i have access to drive one from a company standpoint so maybe the question is what do i spec
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out what would be my preference yes and i have ordered the 2022 model that i will drive for a
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company standpoint and that car will be a convertible it will be a 3lt it will be red mist with some
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black accents dark interior with red stitching z51 with an fe4 suspension that gets a
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majority of it right there it's going to be a fantastic car that sounds good i know that people can't come into the bowling
33:53
green assembly plant for a tour yet at the birthday bash in april you had talked about because the first question
34:00
always to you is when is the plant tour going to start have you got any updates about that yet
34:06
no we really don't but i always like to look at the positive side of things the cdc lifted some of the restrictions
34:13
on mask usage etc etc specifically in kentucky at this point in time 43 of all the population have been
34:20
vaccinated in my opinion we are on the top of the curve of conservatism relating to the covid
34:28
countermeasures and i'm really hopeful that we can as a society and as a company relax some
34:35
of those requirements and still maintain safety for people and that means that then we can get people
34:40
into our factory i can't give you a time frame i guess the counterpoint would be
34:46
well when can we release all of the covid requirements not just with the cdc osha
34:52
is involved from an industrial safety standpoint every state every community has
34:58
different laws and our company has partnered with some of the other automakers to make sure that we maintain some consistency
35:04
so that we're common across various sites so my answer would be as soon as we can
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and keep our people safe and make sure that the people coming into the factory are safe we do know
35:16
without a doubt that our employees like visitors they like to be appreciated for the work
35:22
that they do it's absolutely fantastic i use this term you know a symbiotic relationship
35:28
our corvette customers and our corvette engineering team and our corvette manufacturing operations including the museum we are
35:34
all better when we're together and we're sharing in these experiences and that includes every one of our
35:40
customers that would like to come through our factory so it's just a matter of time see we just have to be a little bit of patience
35:46
that's true we're hoping sooner than later as well kai kai thank you so much for taking the
35:51
time to be on corvette today it's been an honor and a pleasure having you here maybe we can do this again
35:57
really really soon yep just let me know steve i love the opportunity i would take one last little plug here
36:03
to recognize everybody that's working inside this factory every day helping to build this
36:09
fantastic car for all of our customers we do it for all of those that are out there listening to this and we do it
36:14
proudly and we love it that's perfect thank you buddy thanks for listening to corvette today and thanks to our sponsors
36:20
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or call
36:39
you've been 913-745-3732 to corvette today with steve garrett if you'd like to contact steve with any
36:44
thoughts on the podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at stevegarrettdj
36:51
gmail.com that's steve garrett dj gmail.com
36:56
garrett has two r's and two t's or connect with steve on social media on facebook
37:02
twitter or instagram using at steve garrett dj thanks again for listening to corvette
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