Ford is set to resume production of its profitable F-150 pickup at the Dearborn Truck Plant on Friday using parts sourced from tooling shipped as far away as England.
Commercial grade Super Duty production will restart by Monday at the Kentucky truck plant as well as the Kansas City plant that also makes F-150 pickups.
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This followed the massive 2 May fire at the Meridian Magnesium Products facility in Eaton Rapids, Michigan.
"While the situation remains extremely dynamic, our teams are focused on returning our plants to full production as fast as possible," said the automaker's global operations chief Joe Hinrichs.
"The ramp-up time to full production is improving every day."
Ford teams, together with suppliers including Walbridge and other contractors, worked nearly around the clock to get the best selling vehicle in the US back on line as quickly as possible.
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By GlobalDataThe teams removed 19 dies from Meridian's badly damaged facility, and in one case, moved an 87,000lb die from Eaton Rapids to another Meridian factory in Nottingham, England, via an Antonov cargo plane – one of the largest in the world – in just 30 hours door to door.
Work started immediately in the aftermath of the fire. Teams removed and dealt with safety concerns – including dangling siding – and restored electricity, gaining approval to access the site while debris still smouldered inside.
This allowed Ford and Meridian to safely retrieve and relocate tools to more quickly resume parts production and work to minimise the financial impact of the stalled plants.
Ford recovered, repaired and validated most dies that were at the Eaton Rapids facility, and Meridian is now producing parts for the F-150 at two locations – undamaged sections of the Eaton Rapids factory and Nottingham. Production of bolsters for Super Duty is also restarting at Eaton Rapids.
Under normal circumstances, moving tooling the size of a bolster die would take approximately 10 days just to get the proper import and export approvals. However, Ford and its suppliers managed to cut the total time for the entire move to 30 hours, including trans-Atlantic flight time.
When the team removed the die from the Eaton Rapids factory, it was shipped to Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio. Rickenbacker had both the capacity to handle such a large piece of equipment and allowed an Antonov An-124 Russian plane, one of the largest planes in the world – typically used to transport trains, dump trucks and even a 25-foot sea yacht – to take off as soon as the equipment was loaded.
Nearly 4,000 miles away, a team in Nottingham was waiting to receive the die and take it to Meridian's nearby factory. In between, the Ford team received a UK import licence for the die – a mere two hours before the plane touched down.
Parts produced at Nottingham are being shipped via daily flights on a Boeing 747 jet until production in Eaton Rapids returns to pre-fire levels.
"Faced with unexpected adversity, the Ford team, including our global supply partners, showed unbelievable resiliency, turning a devastating event into a shining example of teamwork," said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's head of product development and purchasing.
"Thanks to their heroic efforts, we are resuming production of some of our most important vehicles ahead of our original targets."
The company again emphasised stocks of F-Series pickups and other vehicles remain strong and "customers won't have a problem finding the model they want".
Reuters noted the F-150 full-size pickup generated US$41bn in revenue for Ford last year, about 28% of total sales and the majority share of its profits.
Ford told the news agency at a US press briefing it expected an adverse impact of 12 to 14 cents per share on Q2 earnings but affirmed its full-year guidance, saying it believed it could make up most of the lost production.
