Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003014072
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUS1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Doron P. Levin The New York Times
DATELINE: WAYNE, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
While the Big Three auto makers have undertaken a variety of joint ventures with Japanese auto makers, this is the first attempt to duplicate Japanese manufacturing techniques, right down to the machines, in a plant owned and managed by Americans.
If all goes according to plan, the 38-year-old Ford plant here will operate in many important ways just as Mazda's plant in Hiroshima does.
Ford managers said the plant could provide a model for American auto companies trying to make their own plants as competitive as those run by the Japanese in the United States and worldwide.
The new system, which will produce a model of the Escort subcompact, has brought startling change to the Wayne plant.
In the past three months Ford has spent $600 million to gut and retool the plant with equipment that makes it very different from other Ford plants.
Japanese machine tools - including robots by Kawasaki and house-sized transfer presses by Komatsu that fashion sheet metal into parts for car bodies - have replaced the American-made equipment.
Rolls of steel from Japan sit waiting to be pressed into body parts.
In short, the plant is continuing a trend toward greater reliance on foreign materials and tools, despite complaints by American companies in those businesses.
The manufacturing processes also come straight from Mazda.
Workers, in the Japanese mode, are expected to design their own work areas and decide how best to perform their duties.
Ford said it spent $22 million to train the Wayne plant's workers in safety, continuous improvement techniques, new technology and "quality deployment," the method whereby workers define their jobs and state what tools are needed and how they will measure quality.
As for changes in management, the new plant will adopt the Japanese style of bringing managers and engineers out of their offices and closer to the assembly line, where they act as coaches and advisers rather than supervisors dispensing orders in military style.
The managers even forgo the traditional symbol of authority - the tie and dress shirt - for the same gray uniforms the workers wear.
The United Automobile Workers has often resisted uniforms at other plants in the United States in favor of allowing workers to wear whatever they want.
"Mazda didn't really show us how to build these cars, but we adopted their methods," said Nick Zuk, a Ford hourly worker for 22 years. "A lot of the old-timers had to swallow their pride."
But not all of the hourly workers in the plant have agreed to the changes.
So far about 900 of the hourly workers - those in the stamping and bodymaking area of plant - have agreed to the Japanese-style work rules.
The 2,800 other workers in the plant's assembly area could be covered by a similar arrangement later in the year, if they agree to it.
Ford owns 25 percent of Mazda.
The new Escort will be sold starting April 26 as a 1991 model, replacing an Escort model introduced in 1980.
The two companies have collaborated previously to design the Ford Probe and Mazda MX-6 cars, which are built on the same assembly line in Flat Rock, Mich.
But Mazda executives and managers run the plant and supervise American workers in accordance with a system adopted from Mazda's operations in Japan.
General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. jointly build cars in Fremont, Calif., but Toyota runs the plant.
GM's embryonic Saturn Corp., which plans to begin producing cars this summer, is also based on Japanese-style work practices like encouraging workers to learn numerous tasks and accept expanded responsibility for productivity and quality improvement.
The new Escort is derived from the Mazda 323, although the exterior styling is intended to resemble that of the Taurus.
The Escort - as well as the companion Mercury Tracer, which is essentially the same car - will also be built at Ford's plant in Hermosillo, Mexico. The Tracer is intended to look like a small version of the Sable.
by CNB