the little engine that could
Detnews.com
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Dearborn plant helps produce the little engine that could for Ford
By James V. Higgins / The Detroit News
DEARBORN--Here at the Rouge, which has a long history of innovation, technicians are ramping up production at the auto industry's first punk-rock engine plant.
Do I have your attention? Good, then sit quietly for a moment while I tell you something important about the future of Ford Motor Co.
Workers producing Ford's new four-cylinder engine family at the Rouge aren't spiked-haired, three-chord guitar fanatics, of course. They pierce, broach and hone engine blocks, not themselves.
But to see them and their new surroundings gives you a visceral shock.
People who visited the Rouge fourscore years ago, when Henry Ford's vision of integrated auto production had produced an industrial marvel, must have felt something similar.
Indeed, the Rouge today is bisected at several points between the gloriously outdated and the amazingly modern.
Half of the famed site is occupied by Rouge Steel, which operates efficiently enough but in an industry that is desperately seeking a replacement for a shattered business model.
Just as bravely, and with surprising efficiency given their surroundings, workers at the cramped and ancient Dearborn Assembly plant continue to make Mustangs: a one-product, one-continent plant in an industry gone global.
They've reached for the modern wherever possible, but there's only so much you can do in an archaic space. So workers can't wait to occupy the new assembly plant under construction next door with its promise of more efficient and more humane work stations, and the comfort of being part of a flexible worldwide system.
At Dearborn Engine, however, workers assigned to build Ford's new four-cylinder engine family already have boarded the transporter and been beamed into the future.
Production of engines, the highest-value component in a car and one of the most profitable to build, has always been a high-tech affair. The meaning of that has changed considerably, however.
Traditionally, the technology was intended to facilitate massive production runs. A plant would be set up to build at least 1 million engines per year, most of them exactly the same.
And in North America it was OK if the engine wasn't suitable for other markets. If Europe wanted four-cylinder powerplants that would run all day at 120 miles per hour on the autobahn, a plant would be set up over there to make them.
But today at Dearborn Engine, science yields flexibility, which is more important now than volume. Customer wishes change from day to day and from market to market, and you have to be able to adjust.
Thus, the new solution is to have a plant that can make different engines for different uses on a set of highly flexible tools that's part of a global system.
Dearborn Engine is set up to make just 325,000 per year. But it has sister plants -- exact copies, really -- in Chihuahua, Mexico; Hiroshima, Japan; and Valencia, Spain. That gives Ford capacity to equip at least 1.3 million cars or trucks around the world annually with a selection of engines that can be adjusted effortlessly to meet customer demand.
That impresses hourly technician Dave Gerber, who runs a stand where the engines are hot-tested. "It's a good little motor, I'll tell you," Gerber says. "It's going to be popular." <hr></blockquote>
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