Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant road-tests a new quality strategy

Shutting down the assembly lines that build Super Duty pickup trucks at Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) Kentucky Truck Plant is a multimillion-dollar action company managers try hard to avoid.

As part of a new approach to stamping out quality demons, Kentucky Truck Plant manager Joseph Closurdo said he stopped production for as long as three days earlier this year. The halts gave engineers and suppliers time to fix defective parts discovered as workers began building a new generation of Ford’s highly profitable heavy-duty pickups.

“We would shut the build down if we weren’t meeting one of the targets” for quality, Closurdo said on the plant floor last week.

Halting the assembly line rather than building trucks and fixing them later was just one element of a new approach to attacking quality problems that Ford is road-testing with the launch of the redesigned Super Duty trucks.

Ford’s Super Duty model line has been around since 1998. A successful launch for the latest generation is critical for Ford to hit profit targets for this year. The automaker will report first-quarter results on Tuesday afternoon after the close of New York stock market trading.

This report’s information was first seen on REUTERS; to read more, click this link.