Built in 1957, Wayne Michigan plant gets new lease on life.
08-26-08:
Following up on the previous announcement that Ford would be converting large SUV and truck plants to build new small cars based on their European models, the first of the plants is set to begin work. Ford’s Wayne, Michigan Truck plant where the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator are built will close down in November for conversion.
A $75,000,000 investment, the plant will begin converting its body shop in November when the tooling and equipment specific to the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator will be disassembled and transferred to Kentucky Truck Plant, which begins producing the large SUVs in the second quarter of 2009. The aforementioned full size SUV's have seen over a 50% decline in sales in the past year.
The move paves the way for Michigan Truck to convert to a car plant that will begin producing global C-car based vehicles in 2010. The specific model to be produced has not yet been announced, but it will likely be the Euro Ford Focus or one of it’s variants that Ford has said they are bringing to market. In the interim, the plant’s 1,000 employees will be transferred next door to Wayne Assembly Plant where a third crew will be added in January to allow increased production of existing Ford Focus.
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“This is the best plan to meet consumer demand and utilize our assets at Michigan Truck and other facilities, both in the near term and long term,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford group vice president, Global Manufacturing and Labor Affairs. “Consumers will benefit through increased production of the strong-selling Focus at Wayne, the continuation of the popular Expedition and Navigator for those who need a large SUV at Kentucky Truck, and more world-class C-cars at Michigan Truck.”
Michigan Truck is one of three truck and SUV plants in North America that will be converted to build small fuel-efficient compact and subcompact vehicles. In 2010, Cuautitlan Assembly, which currently produces F-Series pickups, will begin building the new Fiesta subcompact car for North America. Louisville Assembly, home of the Ford Explorer mid-size SUV, is slated to start production of yet more unique small vehicles from the automaker’s global C-car platform the following year. This is great news for Louisville as that plant’s future was in jeopardy.
At the heart of this manufacturing transformation is a flexible operation, which uses reprogrammable tooling in the body shop, standardized equipment in the paint shop and common-build sequence in final assembly, enabling production of multiple models in the same plant.
This means that many different types of cars can be built at the plant without significant retooling.
In a flexible body shop, at least 80 percent of the robotic equipment can be reprogrammed to weld various sized vehicles. In our market where tides can turn on a dime, this makes switching to different models a lot faster and easier.
Today, nearly 87 percent of Ford’s assembly plants around the world have flexible body shops. By 2012, the number will grow to 100 percent.
