Comments on: Ford: Efficiency, um, Later!

By: RobertSD

RobertSD — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:26:20 +0000

guyinconito – thank you for bringing sanity to this conversation.

Ford’s goal is to get rid of 8-10k employees in this round – my guess is that they will only get about 5-6k with the economy what it is. They will still have the 5k employees from ACH (Visteon) and then they will be able to start hiring lower wage workers. However, right now, the automotive industry isn’t doing so well… so there’s no reason to hire these new workers even if they do have thousands of slots available.

The tasks these workers are being hired for are hardly complex. These are not your skilled tradesmen. I would bet that speed might be impacted a little, but I doubt quality will change much. The ramp up time for an assembly worker – especially one that probably used to be an assembly worker but is now unemployeed – is very small. The process of manufacturing at Ford is dynamic enough to protect its quality.

As for Visteon, guyincognito is right, the UAW drove the decision to keep Ford tethered, creating ACH. That Ford bailed them out is hardly surprising. Visteon accounted for a huge part of Ford’s supply. If Visteon had gone under, Ford would have gone out of business. Period. You can’t just start sourcing billions of dollars in components from someone else overnight. Doesn’t work that way.

Ford is doing a very good job with the sale of ACH plants and elimination and integration of employees it took on given the realities of the business and supplier landscape, the demands of the UAW, and its own troubles internally.

By: jthorner

jthorner — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:17:23 +0000

The whole Delphi and Visteon spin-off nonsense looks pretty silly in retrospect, doesn’t it?

By: raast

raast — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:06:45 +0000

Ooooh, lots of forward thinking in the whole equation there. Which genious executive thought up this strategy and what six (or seven) figure bonus was awarded for it?

As for the potential “quality” of the end product, I should believe that old ad, that went something like “the quality goes in, before the name goes on” – well, shouldn’t I??

Reality is – I had one once, and I’ll never have another (it was a lasting impression).

By: red dawg

red dawg — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:14:18 +0000

And this from the same company that expects to be profitable by 2009 !!!!!!!! Not in this lifetime. Just wait and you’ll hear them proclaim that it will be 2010, 2011 or 2012 when profitability returns (if FoMoCo is luckly). I’m seriously begining to doubt if FoMoCo will EVER be profitable AGAIN !!!!!!! Especially with the way the company is being run and managed. Oh and FoMoCo just announced bonuses of $1000 to most everyone in the company. Is it any wonder they are going down so fast????? The ship is sinking !!!!!!!! My money is on Chrysler being the first to file for bankruptcy protection and FoMoCo a close second. Ford will be profitable ONLY when it has better management and then it will probably be more efficient.

By: guyincognito

guyincognito — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:08:20 +0000

“What do you think will happen to efficiency when all these highly paid (but experienced) workers are replaced by inexperienced, entry level workers making half as much”

I think they’ll be spending much less while producing vehicles of the exact same quality. Assembly operations are required to be 100% poka yoked.

Buying back the 11 Visteon plants was driven by the UAW. Ford had no choice. They tried to spin off Visteon but it didn’t work out (how could a supplier compete with huge labor costs and totally outdated assembly plants?). The plants are worthless and will be a huge drain on Ford for some time to come.

By: thalter

thalter — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:00:15 +0000

What do you think will happen to efficiency when all these highly paid (but experienced) workers are replaced by inexperienced, entry level workers making half as much?