Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 1, 1994 TAG: 9412010075
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN ADLER KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LOUISVILLE, KY. LENGTH: Long
Sometime around 2 p.m. on Nov. 18, Ford Motor Co.'s Louisville Assembly Plant turned out its last 1994 Explorer sport-utility vehicle, a metallic blue model bound for a Hertz rental lot near Denver.
On the following Monday morning, more than an hour before sunrise, United Auto Worker members began bolting and gluing trim pieces to freshly painted bodies of 1995 Explorers. Elsewhere in the 3.2 million-square-foot plant, chassis and engines were prepared for assembly with the new bodies expected to roll off the line over the next two days.
It's an extraordinary example of what the auto industry calls a running change - switching to a new model without shutting down the plant, laying off workers and losing production of a hot-selling vehicle like Explorer.
Such seamless efficiency usually is credited to Japanese automakers such as Toyota and Honda, but Ford started building current and redesigned models on the same production line as far back as 1987.
``I don't think anyone's doing it quite like we are,'' said Dale Mc-Keehan, vice president of vehicle operations for Ford Automotive Operations. ``We've been doing it long enough now that there aren't any secrets.''
Indeed, Honda claimed it took only a weekend in September 1993 to switch from building 1993 versions of its bread-and-butter Accords in Marysville, Ohio, to the redesigned 1994 models. However, that changeover was far less complex than Ford's.
The redesigned Explorer has a staggering 2,400 parts different from the 1994 version, including a new chassis and more electronic complexity than the high-tech luxury Lincoln Town Car and Mark VIII. That means 95 percent of Explorer workers will be doing something different in their jobs.
It's as close as Ford comes to doing a new vehicle without starting from scratch. Consider that the all-new Windstar minivan, launched earlier this year in Oakville, Ontario, has a total of 1,700 parts.
General Motors, for all its recent success in shaving hours off the time it takes to build its cars and trucks, is still woefully behind Ford in the art of changing over plants. Weeks after GM started building its redesigned 1995 Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunbird in Lordstown, Ohio, it was turning out just a trickle of the new cars.
Ford, by contrast, is scheduled to go from building 12 Explorers and Ranger compact pickups an hour next week to 841/2 an hour in January, and that's after four days off for Thanksgiving and 10 days off for Christmas.
The quick switch took two years' worth of planning and is working smoothly because:
Suppliers and hourly workers helped build prototypes of the new Explorer as long as 18 months ago. Groups of Ford dealers have been to the Louisville plant twice to evaluate those initial trucks.
Production workers not only had a say in how their tools were designed, but were given the chance to test them long before production began.
Seventy hourly workers spent months at the pilot plant in Dearborn, Mich., then returned to Louisville to teach their colleagues the intricacies of the new Explorer. In all, there was 30,000 hours of worker training.
The UAW pledged to keep grievances over redesigned line jobs to a minimum during the launch in exchange for a pledge that tasks deemed to be too difficult will be re-evaluated later.
Local 862 Chairman Ken Yates told meetings of hourly workers Monday. ``Give it your best and try your hardest.''
Six months ago, Ford began building '95 models on the Louisville assembly line, slipping the new design in with the older '94s. By the middle of this month, 829 new Explorers had been built to test the production process.
After the last '94 was built, workers spent the weekend carting away old tools and boxes of leftovers, replacing them with the tools and parts needed for the new model.
``You've got different attachments, different design of parts, an all-new instrument panel. Basically the whole interior is new,'' said Plant Manager Gerry Minor.
There are 9,000 assembly combinations possible in the 1995 Explorer. That's a lot, but it's dwarfed by the more than 7 million possibilities on the 1993 Explorer. Grouping of popular options has drastically lowered the ways Explorer can be assembled, but Minor said there's still room for improvement.
Especially if the Louisville plant is to have a chance to hit its quality goal of one-half a defect or ``things gone wrong'' per '95 Explorer. The 1994 model had just over 1.4 defects, trailing only the Toyota 4Runner sport-utility in quality.
Ford's companywide goal is one defect per car or truck, down from about 1.7 now. However, the count includes a customer's perception that something is wrong, not necessarily a bad part or assembly problem.
One way Louisville expects to hit its defect goal is by plucking about 130 Explorers a day off the line for a 175-point checkup. If any area fails, all the Explorers in that batch are held at the plant until the problem is fixed. Then the problem is traced to its in-plant origin and a correction is made there.
If the defect goal is reached, Louisville expects its percentage of completely satisfied customers to rise from the current 78 percent to the plant's 95 percent goal.
Is that doable?
The plant boasts two trophy cases of honors, including the government's National Safety Award for three consecutive years; the J.D. Power and Associates award for best compact truck (Ranger) in initial quality as well as the lowest unexcused absence rate and worker's compensation costs in Ford.
``We want to make a quantum leap in quality,'' Minor said. ``We want to be the best assembly plant in the world.''
by CNB