Ford Motor and Other Automakers Automate and Reign in Suppliers to Improve Production Efficiencies

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) (Dearborn, Michigan) will be doing an extensive overhaul of its Claycomo vehicle assembly plant in Kansas City, Missouri, during the next eight months, in order to expand production capabilities. The project will include a major expansion of the paint shop, a complete overhaul of the body shop, and renovation of the chassis line.

The Claycomo plant was the first Ford plant to adopt automation on a large scale. The present body shop alone has 340 robots, which have enabled the plant to eliminate some 200 feet of conveyor line, thus simplifying and stream-lining vehicle assembly. Ford and other American manufacturers are borrowing production-streamlining techniques from Japanese automotive manufacturers, such as Toyota and Nissan, in order to cut their manufacturing costs and increase production levels.

Ford has also recently stripped down and remodeled its antiquated Chicago assembly plant and opened a supplier campus nearby to facilitate just-in-time delivery from several of its suppliers. (See related article:Chicago Brownfield Site To Blossom Again)

The supplier park idea has not seen great popularity in the U.S. yet, primarily because of union opposition, but implementation of this concept will be increasingly necessary in the future, since both suppliers and OEM's need to pare unnecessary costs from their budgets in today's stressed automotive market. Both Ford and General Motors (Detroit, Michigan) (NYSE:GM) have created supplier parks adjacent to, and in some cases actually inside, their new South American plants, with about half the suppliers having space within the assembly plants themselves. In-plant supplier sites facilitate delivery straight from the supplier to the OEM's assembly line, thus saving on lost work time and transportation costs, preventing line slowdowns due to late or defaulted deliveries, and enabling the OEM to further streamline its assembly by eliminating excess conveyor line length.

Nissan North America (Gardena, California), a subsidiary of Nissan Motor Company, Limited, (Japan) (NASDAQ:NSANY) in addressing the supplier problem, has specified the maximum distances its Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III suppliers must be from its new state-of-the-art assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, thus improving chances that production won't come to a stand-still because a supplier is late in its shipment. Most of these shipments are scheduled every hour or half-hour, making timely delivery vital to meeting production schedules. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai, all with highly efficient assembly plants in the South, have similar arrangements with their suppliers. Ford, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and others are racing to catch up, but their awesome disadvantage in the run toward production efficiency is not only outdated plants, but also burdensome pension programs and out-of-control unions, but that's fodder for another article.