Making It Right

Automotive Industries,  June, 2001  by John McCormick

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Putting more flexibility into Ford's factories is one goal of new manufacturing chief Anne Stevens. But first she has to fix the launch-quality problems.

What a time to be taking over the reigns as vice-president of manufacturing at Ford Motor Co. A veteran of Ford assembly operations in Europe and the U.S., Anne Stevens moves into the lead role just as Ford appears poised to move past General Motors Corp. as the world's No. 1 automaker. At the same time, the company's success has come amidst a maelstrom of high-profile product defects, notably on the popular Explorer and smaller Escape sport utility vehicles. But Stevens, 52, says the biggest challenge in front of her doesn't start with individual model defects, upgrading aging facilities or beating GM. Her main goal is more fundamental -- building consensus on the goals and the objectives everyone under her is working to achieve.

"We have a lot of people living and working in many different cultures. So I think the biggest challenge is to make sure everyone is familiar with our vision, that they're inspired by it, and that everyone is focused on achieving the same goal. First on the list is communicating and verbalizing where we want to go," says Stevens.

The latest goal at Ford manufacturing is one that's currently echoing around most of the senior management suites in Dearborn, Mich. Ford, Stevens says, is transforming itself into a consumer company. That means Ford wants to be the No. 1 company delivering automotive product and services, giving the customer what they want, when they want it.

"We've always had a lot of external customer data to look at, "she says. "But I don't know if we've ever sat there as a leadership team, looked at each other, looked at the mirror, and said, "The guiding principle is the customer. How does that influence the decision?'

"In the case of the Firestone tires for example, I think in the past we would have looked internally at logistics and supply, the business model, which is all good stuff," Stevens continues. "But with the Firestone case, the guiding principle wasn't the logistic system, it was the safety of the customer and replacing the tires,"

The theory of being customer-driven sounds simple, but the execution certainly isn't. Consumers in most markets are clamoring for more choice in model selections, more innovation and higher quality. Few, however, are willing to absorb higher price tags for the effort. U.S. consumers in particular are putting pressure on automakers to build fleets of SUVs that are heavy and fuel inefficient at a time of soaring gas prices.

Part of the solution will come from Ford's flexibility and agility. A good portion of that objective falls squarely on Stevens and her ability to keep plants across North America prepared for increasingly short lead times, faster changes in market demand and more product derivatives like the new Lincoln Blackwood and Ford Thunderbird.

"What you look at is the coming product, what is the requirement of that product and what is the customer demanding. So you have to look at the change cycle of the product," she notes. "For example, if you've got a plant that has a new model coming in two years, hat's going to have a different level of strategy implementation than a plant that has just launched a product which is going to be there for a couple of years," says Stevens.

A Test of the Mettle

To do this, Ford is taking steps to overhaul its plants across North America, the oldest being the Dearborn assembly facility built in 1918. While Dearborn is being completely rebuilt over the next few years, Stevens says other Ford facilities will get a substantial overhaul to meet the changing market demands. That should produce a level of flexibility, according to Stevens, that helps Ford adapt to changes -- flexibility in volume, in body and in model derivatives.

Without doubt, the flexibility aspect of Stevens' manufacturing equation is a complex tangle of product, demand, capacity and segments.

"We go back to our goal and ask, 'What is the consumer segment?'" she explains. "A youth segment is going to have a different demand for a vehicle than a more mature driver, so what is that plant going to produce? Which customer segment? What type of product? How many platforms is that plant going to produce? How many derivatives off of one platform is it going to produce? What is the population that you're marketing to? Is the product framed or unitized?

"Obviously, if you take a plant and platform like St. Thomas, Ontario, which produces the Crown Victoria and the Grand Marquis, the customer there is very different than a product like the Lincoln LS in Wixom, Mich. It's complex," she asserts. "We've looked at every single aspect of flexibility and every single aspect of the strategy in terms of manufacturing and product, plant by plant."

At the same time, Ford finds itself wrestling with quality issues, including the highly-publicized Firestone debacle and various other recalls (see sidebar). The new Escape, introduced at the 2000 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, has already seen five recalls, the largest affecting some 51,000 units. The Escape and the near-identical Mazda Tribute are assembled at Ford's Kansas City, Mo., facility.