Production issue idles Ford F-150 plant in Kansas

Ford Motor which published record quarterly earnings Thursday, said it’s idling its F-150 pickup factory near Kansas City for a week next month to repair an issue that’s preventing the plant from reaching production targets.

The shutdown will begin May 9, briefly furloughing 4,626 employees who construct the aluminum-bodied pickup that helped drive net income of $2.5 billion in the first quarter. Ford at first said in an emailed declaration Thursday that the move was to “align our capability with consumer demand”. In a subsequent interview, Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, said that “consumer demand for the F-150 is outstanding”. No doubt, because it is.

Ford needs to adjust the Missouri factory’s body shop and paint operations, which have prevented the plant from accomplishing its everyday production targets for the pickup, Hinrichs stated. So the firm pulled ahead a down week that had been arranged for the fall to fix those problems, he stated.

“We can deal with the devices faster and get Kansas City’s day-to-day production as much as the level it has to be,” Hinrichs stated. “We wish to deal with both the body and paint store in Kansas City to work out some of bugs.”

Ford invested most of the previous two years converting the Kansas City factory and a plant in Michigan to construct the F-150 with an aluminum body, the highest-volume car ever to be constructed with the light-weight product. With the F-150 finally addressing full tilt in the first quarter, Ford reserved record North American pretax benefit of $3.1 billion. U.S. sales of the F-Series truck line, that includes the F-150, increased 5 percent in the quarter to 186,121, as Ford total light-vehicle deliveries climbed up 8.4 percent.