Sometimes, you just need to throw away the rulebook that you wrote a century ago.
Ford Motor Co. President and CEO Jim Farley said the company’s $2 billion investment in manufacturing in Louisville to make its next generation of electric pickups required new thinking. A company founded on the idea of the moving assembly line had to think differently when preparing for the future.
“Three years ago, we did something that no one really saw,” Farley said. “We empowered a tiny skunkworks group of people in California, one-tenth of the normal people we would hire to do this kind of work, three time zones away from Detroit. And we gave them the keys to the kingdom. We tore up the moving assembly line that you see here today. And we came up with a brand-new concept, a brand-new vehicle and a better way of making a car after 122 years.”
Bold talk from the pioneer of the mass-market vehicle. Throughout the nearly hourlong presentation, engineers and executives kept coming back to the idea that Ford's plans are radically different from anything the industry has ever done.
Here are the highlights from when people stopped talking so generally and got into the specifics of how Ford's upcoming plant will be different.
