Increasing the Speed, Quality and Cost-Effectiveness of New Introductions

We are also realigning our capabilities to deliver better products faster than ever before. We are improving our ability to bring new products to market faster by increasing our investment in flexible manufacturing. Flexible manufacturing reduces costs for each new product and lets us shift production at an individual plant from model to model to address customer demand quickly. Shared vehicle architecture facilitates flexible manufacturing, and vice versa. The Dearborn Truck Plant at the Ford Rouge Center, for example, is capable of producing nine vehicle models. In our traditional powertrain facilities, changeover from one product to another typically requires a 12–18 month extended shutdown and usually results in significant equipment obsolescence. A flexible system changeover, by contrast, often takes place during regularly scheduled plant shutdowns during the summer and at Christmas, with an extended two- to six-week shutdown to implement an entirely new architecture. The investment required to retool these flexible systems for a new architecture is typically about 25–30 percent of the cost of converting traditional systems for "top hat"-only changes (i.e., changing only the vehicle body and floor and not the chassis or powertrain). An important outcome of our new UAW contract was the agreement to add five flexible body shops in North America. By the end of the decade, more than 75 percent of our North American plants will be flexible, with 100 percent flexible by 2012. In Europe, 100 percent of our plants will be flexible by 2010.

A key enabler to quickly launching new products in the flexible manufacturing plants is virtual manufacturing. Every new product is "built" in a virtual manufacturing plant, which contains every tool, station, robot and conveyor, all created via three-dimensional CAD data. This allows the manufacturing engineer and the product development engineer to simultaneously prove out product and process compatibility at least one year before the first physical part or vehicle is built.

This translates into multiple benefits for the Company. For example, incompatibilities are solved on the computer, saving re-work costs and time. In addition, the engineers can see virtual assembly operators "at work" in their stations, ensuring that real operators will be able to safely install each and every part. This corresponds to significant reductions in costs, design time and "things gone wrong" with our customers' vehicles.

In the Manufacturing Virtual Build event for the 2010 model year Fusion, Milan and MKZ program, during which the vehicle design receives its final virtual testing before being approved to move forward in the development process, only 29 potential "build issues" were identified – a remarkable 95 percent improvement over a similar build event four years ago during the development of the current model Fusion, Milan and MKZ (Lincoln Zephyr).