Ford Super Duty Parts Issue Makes It 'Impossible to Build' Lost Units

by Matt Posky

October 14th, 2016 5:05 PM

ford super duty parts issue makes it impossible to build lost units

Ford was supposed to start rolling out their 2017 Super Duty trucks much earlier than they eventually did. The holdup, attributed to a parts issue, is over, but Ford isn’t out of the woods yet.

Rodney Janes, UAW chair for the affected Louisville truck plant, told The Wall Street Journal it would be “impossible to build all the lost units” that were held up during this summer’s parts snafu.

Stalling the launch of any model in the extremely popular F-Series line will absolutely hurt Ford’s quarterly earnings. The company experienced a similar parts shortage for the F-150 in May of last year and suffered a loss in sales until production ramped up again.

Thanks to the delayed launch of the Super Duty, the automaker is now attempting to boost production to meet demand. “The launch has created situations that are way out of the norm for (the Kentucky truck plant),” Janes wrote in his union newsletter. He went on to speculate that the previous downtime created by the unspecified parts issue will mean many employees will be working excessive overtime to make up for it.

Ford spokesperson Kelli Felker confirmed to WSJ that production efforts are more or less back on track. “We continue ramping up production on the all-new Super Duty,” she said. “As with all vehicle launches, we are working closely with our suppliers to meet customer demand for the truck, which has been outstanding in its early weeks.”

Ford is expected to report results for its third quarter near the end of October, which will give us a better idea of how financially damaging this problem actually was.

[Image: Ford Motor Company]

#2017FordSuperDuty #AutoPartsSuppliers #Ford #HDTrucks #HeavyDuty #Industry #Trucks #UawFord

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11 of 12 comments

Mikey on Oct 14, 2016

So the local chairman is worried about" excessive over time" ...? He might want to touch base with the Rank and File. Trust me , when there're is a lot overtime available , my experience tells me, there ain't no shortage of volunteers to scoop it up, Back. In the 90' I put two kids through university . I never turned down a minute of O.T.

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- Scoutdude on Oct 14, 2016
  
  Yeah unless they are trying to get every single worker to work 60hrs a week I think that there will be many takers for that overtime. Of course being a union boss it could be the ground work of efforts to push Ford to hire more full time workers. Sure the current rank and file may want the overtime but the union leadership wants more members.
  
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- Lou_BC on Oct 14, 2016
  
  @Scoutdude - Agreed. Union leadership wants members.
  
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Mikey on Oct 14, 2016

@ scout dude .....The assembly line has limits as to Jobs Per Hour (jJPH) . Turning up JPH to accommodate down time, has logistical issues. 20 K in O.T..per year , can make a huge difference to an Hourly Workers life @Lou ....O.T vs hiring more people , has been a political hot potato, since long before I punched the clock in 1972

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- 28-Cars-Later on Oct 14, 2016
  
  Dear Employer, Just give me the $20K more please, I'm already tired. Thanks, 28
  
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- Lou_BC on Oct 14, 2016
  
  mikey - agreed. That is one topic that still is aggressively debated. I've seen it in health care and I've been around that field in various guises since 1983.
  
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- Scoutdude on Oct 14, 2016
  
  @ mikey, you are thinking about it from Ford's perspective, the quote was from a union rep and my comment was based on that. You are right that the line can only move so fast which of course is where the overtime comes into play, increasing production by increasing the number of hours the line is running per week.
  
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Sector 5 on Oct 15, 2016

These days many corps hire part-timers 2:1 full-tmers. That's where any potential OT goes - no OT. And a double-digit yield for Wall Street.

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- Adam Tonge on Oct 15, 2016
  
  Most of the time, yes, but because of the Affordable Care Act, you can't work your part timers past a certain number of hours. Once you do, they qualify for additional benefits. Today, the company I work for is paying a bunch of full time hourly employees OT in order to finish a time sensitive project. Part timers were not allowed to participate because of the ramifications from the ACA.
  
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- Lou_BC on Oct 15, 2016
  
  @Adam Tonge - that is a very valid point. The cost of paying benefits can be up around 35-45% of the cost of standard full-time wages. Companies don't like part-timers if it means having to pay full time benefits. OT skirts the issue of benefits and expanding the workforce. Even having casual employees on the books tends to cost a large company money just from the administrative aspect. I've been told that can be around 2-4k per casual employee and since they are casual, they aren't a reliable workforce.
  
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SC5door on Oct 15, 2016

I smell "Super" weekends coming for them. We already run them in Chicago, double shifts for the rest of the year on Sundays.

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