Looks Like Wixom Plant Has No Future with Ford Motor

[FordBuyer]

I used to live in Wixom when the plant was still going strong back in the early/mid 90's. I lived there for one year when I was in college (and got out as soon as I could!).

 

About the only fond thing I could say about Wixom WAS the plant. I do remember the backups at the exit when the plant changed shifts.

 

Like I said, MDOT completely rebuilt the Wixom interchange a few years ago and now it's so much better. Novi/Wixom have changed a lot over the years and roads are much better and very modern.

 

Also pretty simple to google the story about Wixom plant manager being shot. It was big story all day as manhunt looked for shooter and then follow up was bad PR for Ford as some guy came out and took leased car away from widow out of driveway. She was pissed.

[FordBuyer]

Possibly, FB's source didn't bother to listen to, or didn't bother to remember the part where he/she was told, '...but Ford put $25k toward a new car.'

 

Hey, I live in the fricking area and it was big story at time and all over the airwaves here.

[RichardJensen]

That happened 16 years ago, and your memory isn't perfect. Let alone contemporary news coverage.

[DearbornDerek]

shot and killed in the Wixom plant by a crazy worker,

 

Nope...It was some local crazy who could not take "no" for an answer. So he walked in the plant to kill the woman who worked there. Which is why all Ford buildings now have gates with badge access.

...And lets be honest, the plant was TOO big. If Ford shut down two other plants then a case could be made to open it again. Who knows, if the state had built the new interchnge years ago (like they were supposed to) Wixom might still be open.

[Anthony]

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-11-15/news/9611150075_1_ford-plant-ford-employee-jacques-nasser

 

 

 

WIXOM, Mich. — A man dressed in military fatigues "like Rambo" and carrying an AK-47 shot his way into a Ford plant Thursday, killing a manager and wounding three other people as he sprayed gunfire through the building and then outside at a highway.

The suspect, 29-year-old Gerald Atkins of Wixom, was arrested after hiding in a drain tunnel for several hours.

Ford officials said Adkins had never been a Ford employee but apparently came to the plant to talk to a woman he had been dating. He had had no prior contact with the slain plant manager, Darrell Izzard, 57, a married father of three.

 

 

"He was confronted by security guards at the door and asked to leave," company spokesman Bill Carroll said. "He then pulled out an assault rifle and started shooting."

About 200 day-shift workers were on their lunch break when the suspect walked into the cafeteria wearing camouflage fatigues. One employee said "he looked like Rambo" and others were struck by his calm as he silently reloaded the assault weapon.

"He was tall, slim, AK-47 in hand. He was loading up as he was coming through the door," said employee Roosevelt Manigo. "When he loaded up, I started running."

The gunman fired round after round as he moved through the 4.2-million-square-foot facility that makes luxury Lincoln Continental and Town Car models. About half of the plant's 3,200 workers were on duty when the shots rang out. Izzard, the plant's No. 2 official, was walking down a hallway when he was fatally shot. "We think it was a random thing," Carroll said.

As the gunman moved outside, he began shooting at cars on nearby Interstate Highway 96, which was closed for about five hours and lined with patrol cars. Two Oakland County sheriff's officers near the interstate were hospitalized in stable condition after being hit by gunfire. Another man was treated for minor injuries after he was hit by flying glass.

The suspect was able to elude police for several hours by taking cover in a series of storm drain tunnels, police Sgt. Richard Howe said. After officers decided the area was secured, they used a loudspeaker to tell him to come out.

"After a short period of time he exited and gave himself up," Howe said.

Jacques Nasser, president of Ford's worldwide automotive operations, said Ford security has been tight.

"But when someone basically fires their way -- blasts their way -- into a facility it's very difficult to prevent," he said.

The shooting was at least the fifth at a Michigan auto plant since 1994.

 

[akirby]

I still remember the day when the plant manager was shot and killed in the Wixom plant by a crazy worker

Also pretty simple to google the story about Wixom plant manager being shot.

 

Then maybe you should have googled it yourself before saying that it was a "crazy worker" when it clearly was not.

[rkisler]

I want to make a few comments:

 

1. Wixom will never, never, never be brought on line again as an auto assembly plant. Period.

 

2. Wixom was a mess. There were three body shops. In one case I seem to remember that the lines actually crossed each other. Yikes. Each product that was put into the plant was not done so in an organized manner because the platforms were all over the map. For instance, the Mark was a derivative of the MN12 T'bird which was buit in Lorain. But it was produced in Wixom, and actually diverged substantially from the bird (that's what happens when you don't hold discipline). But that didn't stop Ford's Body and Assembly operations from buying very, very expensive equipment for the body shop, despite the relatively low volumes.

 

3. When the LS was introduced, the body shop was crammed into a corner around the RR tracks. They did that because the program was having trouble with affordability and the future derivatives had all been cancelled.

 

4. When the 2003 bird went into Wixom, it couldn't be put on the LS line because it wasn't flexible -- even though the commonality with the LS was very high. So it used the fallow Mark line, but virtually all of the assembly equipment had to be thrown overboard.

 

5. The paint shop was OK, but it was very difficult for any new program as the skids (the assembly equipment that carries the bodies) had to be modified and reengineered at great cost for each new program.

 

6. Given all of that, and the extraordinarily high fixed costs for Wixom, it was essentially a "black hole." You could expect that ANY new vehicle program -- even a luxury vehicle -- that was considered for Wixom would not be profitable. That's a huge part of the reason that Ford (most unfortunately IMO) cancelled the successor to the LS. When that program was active, you could just see the trainwreck coming.

 

7. So, in terms of value, Wixom is just some land, a building, and some RR tracks, but that's it. It's not a modern assembly plant.

 

8. I hope that Ford does need additional assembly at some point. I can guarantee you that planning volume vs. capacity and required capacity actions for vehicles and components for the next 10 years or so are already under consideration. Firm for the next 3 years or so and a bit sketchier after that. But of course they can shift depending on a variety of factors.

[RichardJensen]

Ugh. Reading that description of Wixom leaves me shaking my head. What a perfect example of dysfunctional decision making..... An environment in which profit and loss are secondary to securing resources, work justification and internecine intrigue. Ford deserved to fall flat on its face, making decisions like that.

[rkisler]

Ugh. Reading that description of Wixom leaves me shaking my head. What a perfect example of dysfunctional decision making..... An environment in which profit and loss are secondary to securing resources, work justification and internecine intrigue. Ford deserved to fall flat on its face, making decisions like that.

 

Richard, it wasn't a single decison, but a whole host of them. Although I try to refrain from pointing fingers at the UAW, I will say that the Ford/UAW agreements reached in the 1980's which literally guaranteed employment had a lot to do with it. When you can't get efficiencies in the plant because even if you do you can't reduce staffing, then it affects your decision. When you have a plant you can't get rid of, you try to fill it.

 

Also, you can see why Mulaly's "One Ford" can have such an impact. Of course, the keys were there all along. Japan was developing standard practices and highly related platforms for quite some time, but even though Ford had Mazda and Hermosillo, we didn't learn the lessons. Ford Europe was in trouble, had a consulting firm (A. T. Kearney) benchmark VW (which was using similar practices to the Japanese) and then used that as a pattern to develop a platform strategy. So when it came time to revitalize the company, Mullaly just wanted to point to a single solution which was FoE, and viewed Mazda as a crutch and "noise."

 

When you have vehicles that are related and have common order of assembly and common mount points, then good things happen. And it's imperitive that you maintain flexibility in the plants so you can adjust production to meet demand. That's also a hallmark of "One Ford." Wixom is done for. But I have been very encouraged over Ford's newly refurbished plants, including Cuatitlan, MAP, LAP, and now FRAP (and I assume also KC). I would love to see a Ford greenfield at some point when the time is right.

[RichardJensen]

Richard, it wasn't a single decison, but a whole host of them. Although I try to refrain from pointing fingers at the UAW, I will say that the Ford/UAW agreements reached in the 1980's which literally guaranteed employment had a lot to do with it. When you can't get efficiencies in the plant because even if you do you can't reduce staffing, then it affects your decision. When you have a plant you can't get rid of, you try to fill it.

It sounds typical for a sufficiently large, sufficiently established company in a mature industry: Where the money comes from becomes increasingly irrelevant to midlevel management and the unions (if there are any).

 

The money is always there, the primary question seeming to be what to spend it on, with that process being driven by concerns that might, by accident, have a certain vague relationship to the success of the business. There's no focus on sound processes that are sufficiently flexible and sufficiently comprehensive.

 

You had a company that basically rewrote the 'how to engineer cars' manual with the Taurus, but hadn't the collective common sense to implement that structure across the board, not to mention the failure to recognize the superior manufacturing processes in place at Mazda, etc.

 

I mean, there's a veritable buffet of bad business decisions that you could study at 1990ish to 2000ish Ford (MN12, acquiring but failing to integrate any number of companies from The Associates to Volvo, basically turning the SUV unit into a separate P&L, and giving them their own engineers, Jac Nasser as CEO, etc.)

Edited October 12, 2012 by RichardJensen

[SoonerLS]

I would love to see a Ford greenfield at some point when the time is right.

That was a fascinating explanation. Would you elaborate on that last statement?

[rkisler]

That was a fascinating explanation. Would you elaborate on that last statement?

 

I don't really have any info. The domestic manufacturers reduced their footprint substantially prior to and during the Great Recession. In a way, as bad as it was, the Great Recession allowed the companies to get rid of excess production when a steady-state economy would have just continued a downward spiral in part due to labor commitments. Ford has taken a number of plant actions to reduce capacity over the past few years as market share has shifted to the South with the U.S. manufactured imports. St. Louis down. Norfolk down. Wixom down. St. Thomas down. OTP is one combined plant where there were two. MAP is one plant where there were two. E-series production moved out of Ohio. (did I miss any?)

 

Ford has taken actions to pack the plants that remain by investing in flexible equipment and staffing them with three crews. In the near future, Fusion production will be added to Flat Rock Assembly.

 

If Ford can keep the turnaround coming and the new products are successful, eventually Ford will run out of capacity and have to reach a decision on another production facility. Right now, the one I see as tightest is C-cars (Focus, C-Max), particularly if the C-Max takes off. There might be more volume, but probably not enough to spring for a new plant at this point (A new plant would be in the neighborhood of $1-1.5 billion). I'm not sure the huge state government incentives will be there this time around to help blunt the cost. Also in terms of capital spending, Ford has to balance additional capacity in the U.S. with addditional capacity in Asia and the huge costs in the U.S. to completely revamp the product lines from top to bottom for fuel economy.

 

We'll have to wait and see.

[silvrsvt]

St. Louis down. Norfolk down. Wixom down. St. Thomas down. OTP is one combined plant where there were two. MAP is one plant where there were two. E-series production moved out of Ohio. (did I miss any?)

 

Edison

[Bored of Pisteon]

O.K. then, but what will Ford do if they decide to sell all of the property and that includes the area on the northside of the plant where the CSX rail spur is and the autoloader feeder rails. You do realize that they are utilitzing that area as temporary vehicle storage right?

[RichardJensen]

Edison

Atlanta and St. Paul. Yikes. There's been a lot of plant closings.

[SoonerLS]

O.K. then, but what will Ford do if they decide to sell all of the property and that includes the area on the northside of the plant where the CSX rail spur is and the autoloader feeder rails. You do realize that they are utilitzing that area as temporary vehicle storage right?

The article that started this said that there's part of the property that Ford has to keep (something about it being landfill and environmental regs), and it looks like they're planning on parceling it out, as there's nobody with both the wherewithal and interest to buy it outright. Given those, I'd imagine that Ford will keep whatever portions it sees as being worth keeping.

[Biker16]

I thnk ford has two final assembly plants dormant at the present time.

 

that would be the old WAP and the older OTP. both are linked in some way to another assembly plant on site but If needed could be brought online to add additional capacity.

[Footballfan]

What a waste. The state spent $250 million for a new interchange for a damn shopping center?

 

The mayor of Wixom was on TV the other day all giddy that Menard's is going to create 150 jobs with some paying as much as $35K a year! In the heyday, the lowest paid worker at the Wixom Assembly Plant could make twice that.

[RichardJensen]

The lowest paid worker was making $70k per year?

 

Scan a paystub and prove it.

[Footballfan]

The lowest paid worker was making $70k per year?

 

Scan a paystub and prove it.

 

Read my post CAREFULLY: "In the heyday, the lowest paid worker at the Wixom Assembly Plant could make twice that." The "heyday" I am talking about the late 1990s when the plant was building close to 200,000 units a year, there was no two-tier wage, and overtime was a regular occurance on a daily or weekly basis.

[RichardJensen]

Again, I want to see a paystub. I have a hard time believing that the *lowest paid* union workers at Wixom, or indeed any Ford plant were taking home $70k per year. Maybe the lowest paid worker on the line. Maybe.

 

 

 

Also, calling "close to 200k units" from a plant with two final assembly lines, 4.7M square feet and 3200 employees a 'heyday' is an indication of just how screwed up Ford was at that time.

Edited October 15, 2012 by RichardJensen

[Footballfan]

Again, I want to see a paystub. I have a hard time believing that the *lowest paid* union workers at Wixom, or indeed any Ford plant were taking home $70k per year. Maybe the lowest paid worker on the line. Maybe.

 

 

 

Also, calling "close to 200k units" from a plant with two final assembly lines, 4.7M square feet and 3200 employees a 'heyday' is an indication of just how screwed up Ford was at that time.

 

I was talking about the lowest paid worker on the line. Then again, you would be hard pressed to find anyone to be making less than the hourly person. At the time, salaried Ford positions were always paid more than hourly.

 

Wixom had only one final assembly line (a separate building assembled the Ford GT years later), although there were three body shops.

 

Regarding the output, it may seem low but Wixom only built luxury cars )that had higher content than lower-priced cars) on three different platforms thus lower productivity per hour. If all the cars were built on the same platform, or lower content Ford and Mercury models were added to the mix, productivity would have been higher.

[RichardJensen]

I'd assume there were a fair number of hourly employees--who, AFAIK, were paid the same base as the line workers--that didn't have the same overtime.

 

And the idea of assembling those products at Wixom instead of Chicago, STAP and Lorain--------I mean, how smart do you have to be to realize that nobody worth paying attention to cared whether Lincolns came from their own plant or some other plant?

 

Of course, as Austin pointed out, labor inflexibility made Wixom a bit of a problem, but with management calcification, and SUVs spinning off cash that could be plowed into all sorts of profitless undertakings, what could you realistically expect, other than this mess?

 

Really, what's worse than bad management and a single enormously profitable product? (cough, BLACKBERRY/RIM, cough cough)

Edited October 15, 2012 by RichardJensen

[Footballfan]

I'd assume there were a fair number of hourly employees--who, AFAIK, were paid the same base as the line workers--that didn't have the same overtime.

 

And the idea of assembling those products at Wixom instead of Chicago, STAP and Lorain--------I mean, how smart do you have to be to realize that nobody worth paying attention to cared whether Lincolns came from their own plant or some other plant?

 

Of course, as Austin pointed out, labor inflexibility made Wixom a bit of a problem, but with management calcification, and SUVs spinning off cash that could be plowed into all sorts of profitless undertakings, what could you realistically expect, other than this mess?

 

Really, what's worse than bad management and a single enormously profitable product? (cough, BLACKBERRY/RIM, cough cough)

 

For the most part, overtime was, and continues to be, mandatory at assembly plants if production is running. You more or less need the same amount of people to man the line as opposed to a parts plant.

 

The reason why Lincolns (and Thunderbirds) were made at Wixom had a lot to do with the control of quality (they wanted those cars to be a step above). They used to have a blurb in Lincoln borchures in the 1980s and 1990s that all Lincolns were made at one plant to assure quality. You are right that today, people don't care. We have Mercedes coming from Alabama, Audis soon to come from Mexico, and Maseratis coming from Detroit.

 

I agree that Ford dropped the ball with Lincoln. It was the number one luxury marque in the country at one time and they apparently thought it would remain that way with the product they had.