Giorno Quattro sabato 14th July
Saturday dawned as hot as ever. Eager to get to the Ducati Factory in plenty of time, we checked out of the hotel, filled up with petrol and attempted to negotiate the tangentale. Unfortunately we managed to get on going the wrong direction, but eventually, with 5 minutes to spare we made it to the meeting point along with about 20 other eager anticipants. Luckily they arranged for two groups to go round, one Italian and one English (although in our group, I believe we were the only real English people, others were from America, Australia etc) All the males spent the whole time with a look of amazement on their faces, finding it hard to believe they were really there. All the females on the other hand had a strange air of resolve – it’s now 11.00am and they shut at 1.00pm, only 2 hours and we can get on. To be fair it was an interesting experience, the factory had people working on the bikes even though it was a Saturday and the actual areas were kept very neat and tidy – in fact you could have eaten your dinner off the floor it was so clean. We saw all the bikes in various stages of completion. As a male dominated country our guide was keen to point out the value of having female workers saying things like: “ We need women to machine these particular parts as they are the only ones with small enough fingers to get to the tiny parts”. And “ We give the job of collecting all the parts of the engine to women as they are good at shopping and they collect the parts in a shopping trolley”. Each engine is assembled by one person and they have to complete one engine in 45 minutes (which doesn’t sound long in view of all the bits involved) and if there is any trouble with an engine they know exactly who to go to! We saw some of the tests the bikes are put through on rolling wheels and rows of bikes ready to be delivered to different countries. For example, a bike going to the US will need to be fitted with an extra filter and side reflectors to conform with emission regulations, whereas a bike bound for Europe won’t need these modifications.
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