SCOTT COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — The pandemic robbed Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky of the opportunity to showcase its 9,000,000 square foot operation that’s become an enormous part of central Kentucky’s fabric, not to mention what it’s meant to our economic landscape.
During that period, when the visitor center was empty, Toyota officials decided it would be a good time to enhance the visitor experience, so they threw more than $2,000,000 into building a new space with interactive exhibits and videos that allow visitors to get an even greater sense of the work that goes into churning out 2,000 cars here daily.
“I think it's good for our guests to come in and understand what it takes to manufacture vehicles,” President Kerry Creech said, while seated right in the middle of the new visitor space.
Creech has been with TMMK for 35 years. His 8th promotion was into the President’s seat during the summer of 2023, and while he’s naturally quite proud of the work being done on this assembly line each day, he seems very pleased with how the new “Experience Center” turned out.
“We have a video room to show what goes on and seeing them watch the video of everything happening in the plant, then going out to see it in the plant, for me is a really rewarding experience,” Creech said.
When visitors come to the “Experience Center” they’ll have an opportunity to do some of the manual dexterity (and critical thinking) exercises that plant workers do to help increase efficiency. They’ll also have a chance to get up close to the “guts” of a vehicle, and see how the men, women and robots assemble vehicles. It really adds to the experience of a guided plant tour, and it’s all free of charge.
“Toyota’s philosophy is we want to build the cars or sell the cars, and we also want to be a good community partner,” Creech said.
Since its Kentucky inception in the mid-1980s, Toyota has made roughly $200,000,000 in community donations according to its website. The group has also become a primary sponsor for Kentucky’s Honor Flights, which take military veterans to Washington, D.C. twice annually for various events there. The free plant tours are one way of growing their footprint on central Kentucky, where they employ roughly 10,000 people. The tours can also serve as a vehicle to a career for future generations of plant manufacturers, or other personnel that's needed to make this place run.
“It shows everyone, that maybe is interested in a manufacturing job, that manufacturing isn't that dirty, grungy place that your grandfather, great grandfather or maybe your father worked in,” Creech said. “We really made the paint scheme bright, polished the floors, what we call, ‘clean, bright and quiet."
With or without the new “Experience Center,” Creech is just glad to see the public back in the building and learning, while enjoying the time there after the pandemic-induced hiatus.
“It was lonely in the plant, not seeing those trams come through with people waiving at us, and getting to show off what we do,” Creech said, before crediting Corporate Communications Manager, Kim Ogle for her role in devising the new center and getting the tours up and running in the post-COVID world.
If you’d like more information about touring the Toyota plant, or to book a tour, click here.
