Milwaukee, WI: Harley - Davidson

Monday, January 14th

We woke up early, boarded the bus and headed to Milwaukee, WI in order to go visit Harley-Davidson. What a great trip that was. The Harley culture had the attention of the whole class and everyone was psyched to meet and greet with employees and executives. We were warmly greeted by Jim McCaslin, President and COO of Harley-Davidson, as well as Ron Hutchinson, Senior Vice President of Product Development – two very laid back and entertaining speakers which also helped get the class warmed up to the Harley-Davidson culture. After lunch we headed to the Pilgrim Road Plant where they manufacture the engines and drive trains for the Dyna, Softail and Touring product lines. This plant was great as it completely reminded me of my summer internships at Visteon in Michigan working at the Sterling Heights Plant manufacturing ring gears for the F-Series pick-up trucks. It was very cool to get back to my manufacturing roots and be surrounded by the smells, machines and products that I knew so well back in the day.

After the tour, we were taken to a local Harley dealership so that we could go and sample the products and interact with the finished goods and be more ingrained in the culture. There were many beautiful and amazing works of art (the bikes) at the dealership and the owner was very excited to talk with us about the Harley-Davidson Dealership operations. When all of our questions were answered, we were whisked away to Maxie’s Southern Comfort for an amazing dinner of pulled pork and other southern dishes. What a meal complete with some local beers, New Glarus’ Spotted Cow - awesome. After dinner, we drove back down to Chicago and hit the sack.