Ford Switching More Plants to Small Vehicle Production

Hello small stuff... goodbye trucks. Ford plans to invest $75 million in Michigan Truck Plant's body shop to prep it for small-vehicle production. All of the plant's current Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator tooling will be disassembled and sent to the Kentucky Truck Plant, set to start production of the SUVs in late 2009. The Michigan plant will be used to produce cars for the global market and until then its employees will move next door to help build the Ford Focus. Cuautitlan Assembly builds the F-Series right now, but will switch to Fiesta production in 2010. Louisville Assembly (which has been home to the Explorer) will be retooled to build small vehicles.

About 87 percent of Ford's body shops are flexible operations -- they use reprogrammable tooling and other methods that make it easier to build more than one model in the same plant. Ford says all of its plants will have flexible body shops by 2012, giving the company more production options.

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