Michigan Assembly Plant - Two Week Shutdown (May 17 and 24)

[bdub2you]

My industry is also chip dependent and we've been having shortages ever since people started buying new iPhones every year.

Apple makes its own processors and the average iphone replacement cycle is 4 years.

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[Tricky Dick]

They are already doing that. 30% of converted orders are not soft top, but 30% of what they can build for a while has to be soft top. These are very low build numbers, so shows you what kind of mess the hard top is right now. I cant say more than that.

Are those targets or is this from the future?

 

[JimL]

 

[SnowBronco]

Are those targets or is this from the future?

Those were the targets up till Friday. They had met/exceeded them Monday/Tuesday. No update for today. Just that the body shop was primed and ready to ramp up next week.

Edit. @PREMiERdrum mentioned that he thought the OKTB was coming shortly as well....

 

[@BadBlueBronco]

Apple makes its own processors and the average iphone replacement cycle is 4 years.

Apple doesn’t make their own processors

 

[CaliforniaBurrito]

I talked with one of the Bronco team out here in Utah today about this and kind of sidestepped around the question a bit. He made a valid point to me. Neither one of us were aware of any customer vehicles scheduled during the two week shutdown.

My conjecture based on that thought:

Reading between the lines, I would think Ford would be more likely to route chip availability to customer (read: revenue generating) builds rather than dealer mannequins and give aways for social media. I know when I have a product shortage, I try to sell as much of that product as I can rather than using it toward non-revenue generating activities. My industry is also chip dependent and we've been having shortages ever since people started buying new iPhones every year.

Even if Ford has shipping containers of semiconductors waiting, they might be reprioritizing them toward actual customer production at this point because they aren't sure when they'll get the next shipment.

In that case, it would make sense to "take a break" at the factory when there are no customer builds scheduled because once they start customer builds, they're going to be busy for a while and will eventually exhaust the supply, hopefully not before more can be sourced.

My first thought was they'd likely intersperse the dealer mannequins in among the customer builds once they start back up but then I thought some more about it and what I'd be doing in the same situation. I would not be building any vehicles that would not generate revenue and would be shipping ones I can sell and realize actual revenue on as fast as I could get them out the door.

Probably premature to hold a pity party quite yet...

Dealer mannequins were and remain a stupid idea. Ford has more reservations than they can fulfill for possibly 2 model years, so why do they need show models at dealership to try to get even more orders that they can't fill? 3k broncos is not an insignificant amount of the MY21 they claim to be able to build.

Hope you are right in that someone took a look in the mirror and decided they were doing something stupid. However, I would think that means we would have to start hearing from dealers soon getting notification that their mannequins are delayed/cancelled.

 

[ChrisD]

Apple makes its own processors and the average iphone replacement cycle is 4 years.

Apple designs their processors. They do not make them. The processors are manufactured by TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

For instance:

What kind of memory do iPhones, Samsung Galaxy phones, iPads, laptop computers, most GPUs, etc., use? DDR

Who makes memory? There are seven companies, I can source from three of them and only one is in the USA.

How does your iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, etc., store the data you have on it when it is powered off? NAND boards.

Every freaking thing uses NAND boards for Non Volatile Memory. In addition, rapid and mass adoption of smartphone technology in emerging markets (not the USA) is driving a lot of the semiconductor production.

Ultimately, all of these products from your refrigerator, the phone in your pocket, your thermostat, car, smartwatch, etc., are all competing for the same finite pool of resources that are produced by a very small number of foundries. My use of the term iPhone was intended tongue in cheek and not literally, but it's a giant intertwined supply chain.

Some of these items have higher sales margins than others and the foundries are using their limited manufacturing capability to make the things that pay them the most dollars, or more realistically in most cases, yuan.

 

[ChrisD]

Dealer mannequins were and remain a stupid idea. Ford has more reservations than they can fulfill for possibly 2 model years, so why do they need show models at dealership to try to get even more orders that they can't fill? 3k broncos is not an insignificant amount of the MY21 they claim to be able to build.

This, I absolutely agree with. I can't see stepping over dollars to pick up dimes by making non-revenue generating product.

 

[PREMiERdrum]

I honestly don't think they'll be much of any delay... I mean are they already making press vehicles/mannequins and had been for a couple weeks? @PREMiERdrum said yesterday that they were about ready to start ramping up and there's still 10 days to go before that shutdown.... Seems to me they may have between 2500-3000 built by then anyways. Bunch of over reactions on here. Lol.

Middle of last week, my engineering contact assured me that these commodities were known when orders were scheduled. He said that dealer demo builds might be spread out, but build dates already released to customers were likely safe.

Late last night, my MAP source said he is expecting to be off work for the summer as the situation is incredibly dire.

Either Ford quietly shored this up, or the situation has gotten much, much worse very, very quicky.

I expect we'll know soon.

 

[Compta38]

i wonder how many will jump ship now?

Hopefully a bunch...with early timestamps, Sasquatch and V6.

 

[Rlack75]

Yes, they have hit those targets for this week. Many have been on display in front of MAP and shown on here. The question is what facility are the current tops coming from and how sustainable is that....

Give everyone a soft top with hardtop plumbing.
Ship the MIC for free later. (Yep I am hard on someone else’s )

 

[Carolina Jim]

Either Ford quietly shored this up, or the situation has gotten much, much worse very, very quicky.

I've got to believe this is roof-related. Webasto currently lists 67 roof production job openings at their new Plymouth MI plant.

When you look at the devolution of top options from 'reveal' through today...you go from choosing MOD tops in any body color, or MIC >>> MODs in black or MIC >>> MIC only >>> MIC maybe

And that's assuming you're comfortable with a top made by a bunch of Day#1 new hires

 

[Dr.Detroit]

“…Michigan Assembly Plant will be down weeks of May 17 and 24. (In every case except Michigan Assembly, this is a continuation of previously announced down time.)”

Not trying to do clickbait with the title, but just saw this and seems MAP is subject to a previously unannounced shut down.

This is absolute clickbait...LOL, it is not disrupting production. It is scheduled. people assume too much..LOL

This was accounted for, great job planning Ford. I know people want their Bronco, but thinking Ford does not understand this is laughable. Do you see MAP on the list of plants that are affected? Please read more careful and don't assume the worst.

Ford already stated Production will not be interrupted!

 

[PREMiERdrum]

I've got to believe this is roof-related. Webasto currently lists 67 roof production job openings at their new Plymouth MI plant.

When you look at the devolution of top options from 'reveal' through today...you go from choosing MOD tops in any body color, or MIC >>> MODs in black or MIC >>> MIC only >>> MIC maybe

And that's assuming you're comfortable with a top made by a bunch of Day#1 new hires

It's semiconductors. The few that are coming in currently are being diverted to Dearborn Truck (for obvious reasons). Livonia transmission is already down to 1 partial shift daily and that doesn't seem sustainable for too long. If anything, the semiconductor related slow down or stoppage at MAP would give Webasto a chance to get ahead of their delivery plans for MAP.

It's quite possible that the Bronco scheduling already complete was done knowing how few chips were coming in, which is why relatively few here (and in odd configurations) got the production date emails. Staying on a 100ish per day Bronco output with lower Ranger blend could check some boxes while still prioritizing getting chips to Dearborn for F-150s.

Feeling in the plant, however, isn't that. Now that they've given dates to customers, I expect they'll be cleaning things up soon if changes are coming.

 

[MN_OuterBanks]

This is absolute clickbait...LOL, it is not disrupting production. It is scheduled. people assume too much..LOL

This was accounted for, great job planning Ford. I know people want their Bronco, but thinking Ford does not understand this is laughable. Do you see MAP on the list of plants that are affected? Please read more careful and don't assume the worst.

if you read the letter it was scheduled for everyone EXCEPT MAP. It specifically says it in the letter. MAPs shutdown was canceled and now it is back on.

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