How has Ford Purchasing avoided any responsibility for Ken product availability (chips) and the diminished quality for buying inferior product from around the world. Anyone else believe that Ford Purchasing is a protected class of management with ZERO accountability for our fall from favor with the public. Love to get suppliers reactions to how purchasing drives cost down initiatives and dodges any accountability. Rare breed.
7 replies (most recent on top)
1wpk+1cBOpXOO are you kidding me??? Bwahahahahaha!
HTT, Nice to see you read the blog and take time to read the posts. Only one doing your job, really. Stealing technology, steering business to Mexico and Asia replacing US suppliers, constant cost down demands and shifting blame to suppliers on recalls driven by poor design or implied performance expectations. Purchasing is a den of thieves and you and your team should not be surprised that no supplier trusts you or is willing to share new technology. Anybody but Ford. Oh, think you may have heard that already from chip suppliers. Run out of room to store vehicles yet?
@1wpk+1cBOpXOO thanks for the laugh
When we were in the office, use to think the only Ford employees truly doing their jobs was the facility people ( the ones ensuring the boilers, a/c etc were working). They had quite a task at the glass house and fmcc with those old systems and the demanding c-suite ( who thought they should be able to show up on the weekend to an ice cold office in the summer - who cares the cost to keep the whole zone/building cool 24x7)
Purchasing is the only organization doing its job at Ford Motor Company!
PD - just look at the cr-p it designs!
Quality - Here is an organization that is a 10! Sure! Oops make that 1.0
FCSD - could get rid of most of the organization and it wouldn't matter
Sales & Marketing - how many people does it take to support F150? It is the only profitable vehicle line - and then the dealers do all the real sales work!
HR - Well, very few have actually ever seen them, but they are good for firing people.
Manufacturing - well, the UAW is at least better than their salaried counterparts
Finance - I do give them an "A" for creative accounting
IT - they are the best-in-class whiners in the entire company (no actually make that world!)
Management - they get better and better each passing year!
Custodians - most are outsourced --- but they are the only people at Ford working!!!!
But blame purchasing - give me a break!!!!!
Whose strategy was this and look at the impact? Purchasing exonerated here too?
The microchip crisis has persisted for months now, impacting Ford more than any other North American automaker. With no end in sight until at least next summer and perhaps even longer, it’s worth asking why this microchip crisis happened in the first place, as well as how long we can honestly expect it to last.
The origins of the semiconductor chip shortage can be traced back to the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring when lockdowns forced the temporary closure of manufacturing facilities across the globe. Automakers like Ford canceled chip orders, anticipating a major slowdown in sales amid the pandemic as travel decreased significantly, as Vox recently reported.
At the same time, demand for 5G devices, gaming consoles, and laptops skyrocketed, particularly as more people were suddenly working from home, which caused tech companies to order more chips. Once automakers realized that consumers weren’t in fact going to stop buying new vehicles, it was too late, as those stockpiles had been depleted and semiconductors can take up to six months to produce.
There are many other obstacles to recovery from the chip shortage as well. For starters, the cost of shipping has increased tenfold since the onset of the pandemic, according to BBC News. Chipmakers have been running at maximum capacity for months, trying to make up the shortfall, and are investing millions to expand production even further. Unfortunately, that process takes years to complete, especially for U.S.-based chipmakers like Intel that are looking to get into automotive chip production.
As Ford Authority reported last month, Ford’s production has been stymied even further thanks to a recent fire at a Renesas chip plant in Japan. According to Blue Oval executives, 75 percent of Ford’s 50 percent loss in Q2 production can directly be attributed to the fire, which nine of the automaker’s Tier 1 suppliers rely on.
Unfortunately, there is no easy or quick fix for these problems, which is why Ford and a number of chipmakers believe the shortage will persist until at least next summer, and likely even longer than that.
LOL - obviously you have no idea how “sourcing a supplier” works. Heavily driven by PD recommendations. It’s not solely purchasing a fault.
Key product availability?
After purchasing supported the stolen technology and got caught, how can they feign surprise at the lack of availability and not being a customer of choice.
No accountability at the top for this failed strategy.