Ford tore up the moving assembly line concept and designed a better one, the company’s CEO Jim Farley explained to a crowd gathered at Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky for Ford‘s announcement that a new, lower-cost electric truck is coming to market in 2027.
“One of the first things we did was bring in manufacturing expertise directly from our teams in Dearborn. That was incredibly important [it] set the baseline of what the architecture of the products would be off the platform. [It is a] marriage of both worlds, in terms of the expertise of 122-year-old company with massive capabilities and supply chain and industrialization in general,” Alan Clarke, Ford’s executive director of advanced EV development, told Newsweek.
“[It] was really important to not only engage early, but also ensure that the ideas were able to fail fast. That’s a startup mentality. When you’re moving quickly, you want to really quickly determine: Is this actually more efficient? Does it actually save us money? Do we still deliver what we need to the customer in order to effectively make the product?” he said.
The formula for the new assembly line structure, the Ford Universal EV Production System, starts with the new Ford Universal EV Platform. That platform underpins future battery-electric vehicles and is the result of a California-based skunkworks operation that was designed and enabled to break Ford’s timeline, agility and product development norms.
Ford Motor Company
Instead of a traditional snaking assembly line structure, Ford’s Louisville plant, which expanded 52,000 square feet as part of the effort, will feature an “assembly tree.” That tree will include three sub-assemblies that run down their own separate assembly lines in unison, then join together at the end.
“There’s been a lot of work in the last three years on AI, on plants, and we’re doing that and putting that into the system too. You’ve seen some of that already, but then we’ve also taken to this new platform, what we’re able to do and add to that. So again, it’s a win, win on both sides,” a Ford spokesperson said.
As part of the vehicle building shift, single-piece aluminum unicastings will replace dozens of smaller parts. This will allow the front and rear of the vehicle to be assembled separately. Additionally, less parts means fewer opportunities for failures that result in recalls, a business element that Ford has continuously struggled with during Farley’s tenure, costing the company billions.
“Elegant, simple designs are ultimately what enable low-cost: deletion of parts, deletion of process…. There’s a lot of innovation of powertrain, in how we put the whole product together,” the spokesperson said.
Under the new assembly plan, Ford’s assembly line workers on the third branch of the line put together the battery, seats, consoles and carpeting.
Parts travel down the assembly tree to operators, further simplifying operations, in kit form with all fasteners, scanners and power tools included, in the order in which they are intended to be used.
The team has further optimized the assembly line and order of operations for building the vehicle to improve the ergonomics for employees, reducing twisting, reaching and bending.
Ford estimates that this new way of assembling vehicles will be 40 percent faster than the current assembly time of the Ford Escape. Some of that time, Ford says, will be yielded back to the company for other tasks, with an ultimate net speed improvement of 15 percent. It takes 20 hours to build one Ford Escape today.