Rick you do a great job of explaining the technical and logical reasons for the delays.
I'm not a FoMoCo apologist by any stretch, but I am realistic and understand how major corporations run (sadly). It could be considered launching the Bronco in a global pandemic was a mistake, but look at it from Ford's perspective. In early and mid 2020, no one had any idea how the pandemic was going to play out. There was (is) so much political misinformation about the virus, trying to make major business decisions whether to delay the launch or go forward with it, will always been subject of debate. Wait how long? All public corporations have shareholders to contend with, revenue targets to meet, and customers to please. With nothing predicable for 8 to 10 months of 2020 no decision was bad nor good. The Bronco is just one part of rebuilding and right-sizing FoMoCo for the next several decades. There were a lot of hard decisions to make at the executive level.
Interesting take, you think Ford's transparency and communication has been the best it could have been?
There used to be a Ford exec (Carmaker1) who posted frequently early 2020. Reading between the lines, I think Ford knew they had a grand-slam early on & was scared some copycat would steal their thunder
No and Yes actually, both to their detriment. Rule one is never blame your suppliers in front of a Customer. The situation between Ford and Webasto had to get pretty shitty for us to learn the tops are a major constraint. What haven't we heard about the Bronco launch? We know every time MAP shuts production down, the roof has a leak, the plant was flooded and stopped production for 1.5 hours. Who knows if all the social media leaks are on purpose or not. We have a member in Ohio who seems to know everything happening at MAP. It is near impossible to control information with the advent of social media and instantaneous photo processing and worldwide distribution. We all know too much IMO.
Well my opinion is that it's a huge disappointment that so many thousands of customers don't even know what model year they are going to fit into. I work for a much larger and technology focused company than Ford, and it beggars belief that Ford does not have enough data right now to approximate every pending order's model year (unless they are really just not very data savvy)
Actually, I think it shows exactly how BAD the situation at Webasto actually is. If Ford can't predict deliveries of a major subcomponent, they can't predict anything.
I'd say it's a data integrity issue, rather than being data quantity issue. I'd Ford is quite good at data management. The logistics of keeping parts supplied for US 3,500 dealerships, hundreds manufacturing facilities around the world, and with just-in-time requirements too boot, I'm sure is as difficult a task as any other data company can deal with. And Ford has been doing such for nearly 100 years.
Okay, but what information do you not have from Ford that would lessen the situation for you. Do you need to see the integrated master schedule and the thousands of perturbations that have appeared since July 2020? Do you need the detail of the domino effect one or several major subassemblies or components creates on the factory floor? I mean what level of detail do you need, and I doubt most of us would even understand it.
