Kansas City Ready to Make Aluminum F-150s
Re-tooling for a new vehicle often requires an extended shutdown of a manufacturing facility. When that facility is slated to build the aluminum 2015 Ford F-150, it can take even more time.
New equipment must be purchased and tested. People need to be trained. Just one mistake through the process can be detrimental to the profitability of the company. Ford’s Dearborn plant is already up and running making the new truck, and now the sister plant in Kansas City is physically ready to go.
The F-150 side of the Kansas City truck plant has been shut down since the holidays to retool for the truck. As of Monday the 26th of January, the plant is ready to pump out new trucks to help Ford get to their maximum capacity.
Even though the plant is ready to go, the employees are not. Assembly line workers in Kansas City will undergo several weeks of extensive training, and build several pre-production trucks to make sure they are up to snuff.
While Ford hasn’t given a date when final production trucks will start rolling off the line, Ford has said they expect it to happen before the end of the first quarter of this year.
To keep up the pace of selling a new truck every 43 seconds, Kansas City’s production facility is essential. It’s almost time for them to go live.
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via [Kansas City Business Journal]
