I'm slowly making my way around the Big 3 going on factory tours; Ford was today. We visited Rouge Center and saw the new, state of the art Dearborn Truck Plant. Uh-oh. Ford may be in some trouble. Compared to GM's Lansing Grand River, this is not a good example of current world-class automotive manufacturing. The pace seemed slow, workers had 15 seconds of slack time after every vehicle, and the andon cords were tucked away behind the mountain of inventory piled at each station. We heard last night in class about how hard TPS workers work (a Honda plant in Kentucky had a big problem about a decade back with employees getting into crashes on their drive home because they fell asleep) and the folks down at Ford DTP don't fall into that category. Most troubling, though, were the dozens, nay hundreds, of trucks circling the center of the plant with defects, waiting to be driven on the test track, and standing in line for the water test. The last test is a real killer for me: isn't the test of a quality production system that you don't need testing at the end? If the Blue Oval isn't confident that their vehicles hold out water, I think that will be a good metaphor for what happens to the company.

I'm signing off now to go to the grocery, buy two juicy steaks and some broccoli, and head home to make a dinner perfect for somebody whose lunch got squeezed out of the picture by a hairy schedule.