Ford to stop production of the F150... tonight?

[crazyal]

Ford pioneered the just in time parts inventory system that is admired and used throughout the manufacturing world. The downside of this lean inventory system is when a key supplier cannot deliver parts and the entire line must shut down.

Actually you can point to Toyota for this. They started back in the 60s as part of what they call lean manufacturing. Multiple companies teach the "Toyota way". The company I work for sent a lot of us to a local college to learn it. There's a lot of quotes that credit this that and the other thing but when you actually take the course (2 week long) and they go into the history it really comes down to the way Japanese think. Just like the Germans are known for precision.

We used light bright pegs on a wooden board. The first time was a free for all. All we were told was to do was produce as many as we could. There were 4 stations and each station had to put a certain number of peg of a color in specific locations. We were timed for 10 minutes. The second time was with a little structure. The final time was using just in time. The station would only provide the next station with one unit. The difference was noticeable. The problem, of course, is when the station (or in this case factory) before you can't provide work for your station.

 

[Ford850]

The explosion at Meridian was about six miles from my house and actually woke my wife up. It blew a huge hole in the roof and because it was a magnesium fire they just had to let it burn out. Fire fighters just got access to the source a day or two ago. Luckily it was during shift change and only two were injured, no one died.

Some production has resumed at that facility but it may take four to six months to get going 100% again. I expect Meridian has the ability to move production to their other facilities but that takes time too. I work for another automotive supplier and we are affected with the shutdown. FCA (Chrysler) and GM will also be affected at some level. I did hear that this won稚 hurt Ford because inventory was getting high and now they don稚 have to offer huge incentives to reduce it.

This stuff happens a lot. Just last week there was a strike at a plant that had the supply chain slowing down. For suppliers, supplying many different platforms is the best way to absorb this type of thing. The OEM痴 don稚 like to dual source components due to quality and traceability issues. The trade off is risks like this can shut down an entire plant.

It's always interesting to hear more of a story than what we read in the news. Thanks!

 

[k0ua]

Just like land, they aren't making any more oil. What we got is what we got and that's it.

Are you certain about that? I am not so sure.

 

[YLee Kioti]

The Russians tended to think that oil is a naturally occurring mineral (abiotic oil) while western thinking is that oil is old biomass turned to goo.

Scientists Prove Abiotic Oil Is Real!

Years ago late 90's or so i got into a heated argument with another hand about no lack of oil.
Peak oil is all b.s. then showed him an article (IIRC) about how Chevron had revisited a capped well off the gulf coast and found that after 10+years
the well was about at full capacity.

If I wasn't so lazy (well there yah go, cause ah is rights now) I'd go looking for that article again. probably in some archive.

However, nothing sells like fear; such as fear of oil shortages. That meme runs our economy.