Michigan Truck Will Soon Roll Out Cars
Today, the factory is in the middle of an 11-week shutdown. Production was halted because dealers could not sell the trickle of oversized sport utility vehicles the plant’s single shift churned out.
Next spring, Ford truck will move production of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator to its Kentucky Truck Plant. After that, Ford will begin retooling Michigan Truck to produce smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles based on its new global compact platform. The plant’s 1,000 employees will be transferred next door to the Wayne Assembly Plant, where Ford will add a third shift in January to produce more of its hot-selling Focus compact cars, which are in great demand as high fuel prices send consumers scrambling to less thirsty vehicles.
The moves are all part of a radical retooling strategy the automaker announced last month. If it succeeds, it will make Ford one of the most versatile car manufacturers on the continent and give the company the flexibility it needs to respond to a rapidly changing market.
As part of the plan, Ford also will convert truck and SUV plants in Mexico and Kentucky to car production. While financial details of those projects have not been disclosed, the company estimates each will cost approximately $250 million to retool.
Ford global manufacturing Truck can be done on the cheap because the company already invested some $300 million here three years ago to build a tooling system that allows the plant to produce several different models on the same assembly line. Since then, the equipment has been used to build different types of SUVs, but most of the same tools — 80 percent — can be used to produce more fuel-efficient cars and crossovers.
“We already have a flexible body shop and we have the ability to convert it fairly inexpensively”, “Because we’re only one shift, we’re not taking advantage of that flexibility that we put in back. This plan allows us to do that, and take advantage of it going forward.”
When the retooling is completed next year, Ford will be able to produce eight different models on the same assembly line at Michigan Truck, which will by then have been renamed to reflect its new focus. Ford has not yet decided what the new name will be.
“These are investments that needed to be made a long time ago,”"Honda truck for sale and Toyota truck for sale have been doing this for years, and they’re the only ones that have been able to handle this transition in the face of high gas prices.”
Ford already has done that in other countries. Its assembly plant in Camaçari, Brazil, is considered a model of flexible manufacturing. But only one of Ford’s North American factories — the Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada — is building more than one platform on the same line at the same time.
“Around the world, we have lots of flexibility — and we take advantage of it,”"We’ve been on a journey here in North America to do the same thing.”
Some observers have criticized Detroit automakers for possibly moving too quickly to shift truck production to cars. they noted that Michigan Truck will also be able to produce trucks for sale and SUVs again if the market demand returns.
