Ford Is Restarting F-150 Production After Flying Tools To England

Ford's mammoth mission to get its truck production back on track involved helping fire-hit supplier Meridian fly a massive production die to England to continue working
Ford Is Restarting F-150 Production After Flying Tools To England

Ford is set to restart production of the F-150 and Super Duty trucks after production was halted by a supplier’s factory fire a week ago.

The decision to fire-up the Dearborn Truck Plant on Friday will see Ford’s most profitable truck start to roll off the line once again. The Super Duty plant in Kentucky and the other F-150 facility in Kansas City are expected to restart production on Monday.

Ford Is Restarting F-150 Production After Flying Tools To England

After the serious blaze at Michigan-based Meridian Magnesium Products, a division of Meridian Lightweight Technologies, Ford has been working with everyone involved in the supply chain to ‘refurbish and relocate’ all the tooling necessary to produce the parts needed for Ford’s trucks.

Incredibly, as part of that, Ford air-lifted a massive production die to a Meridian facility in the UK in just 30 hours from extraction to reinstallation, courtesy of a huge, specialist Antonov An-124 transport plane. Its new location, just north of Nottingham in the English East Midlands, is now producing F-150 parts at speed to help with the return to normal production scales.

Ford Is Restarting F-150 Production After Flying Tools To England

Those parts are being flown daily back to the US by Boeing 747 until Meridian’s Eaton Rapids plant returns to full capacity and can take the die back. Presumably there were no other US-based locations where Meridian could operate the die properly.

Ford and Meridian were able to gain access to the partly burned-out Eaton Rapids plant even while the wreckage was still smouldering, according to Ford, allowing them to salvage tooling and restart at least some production very quickly. Parts supply for Ford’s Expedition, Explorer, Flex and the Lincoln Navigator was unaffected.

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Comments

Anonymous

If only Tesla seemed this dedicated to solving production issues 😂

05/17/2018 - 08:41 |
166 | 0
Ben Anderson 1

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Apply to the burn area

05/17/2018 - 09:33 |
66 | 0
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

You gotta give Ford credit, they’re fighters.

05/17/2018 - 12:57 |
34 | 0
🎺🎺thank mr skeltal

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

I know, right? All they seem to do is saying “we are planning this” “we will soon start doing that” yada yada yada. They only talk, but never actually do anything.

05/18/2018 - 06:22 |
0 | 0
5:19.55

England is my city

05/17/2018 - 10:24 |
16 | 6
Richard the edition 100

In reply to by 5:19.55

*england is my f-150

05/17/2018 - 10:26 |
22 | 4

*England is a country

05/17/2018 - 11:52 |
10 | 8

Serbia is my continent! :-D

05/17/2018 - 21:27 |
0 | 4
Daksh Pat

so does that mean f150s will be better quality?

05/17/2018 - 23:16 |
2 | 0

Does ford uk have a vehicle with better quality than the F150

05/18/2018 - 01:48 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

It’s not like it hurt sales or anything. RAM failed to meet their own sales goal last year with no factory fires.

05/25/2018 - 15:48 |
0 | 0