FORD'S TEST BED: Brazil's Camaçari plant is model for the future
Bryce G. Hoffman / The Detroit News
At Ford Motor Co.’s factory here, a group of Visteon Corp. workers connect the wiring in a dashboard module for a Ford EcoSport. Next to them, Lear Corp. employees are building seats for the same vehicle. A few feet away, Ford's Diede Silva dos Santos applies trim to a Fiesta subcompact. She's mastered seven jobs at the plant and is working on an eighth.
“If you do different jobs, it's more interesting,” said Silva dos Santos, 24. “It gives me a chance to expand my knowledge. (It) makes me a more valuable employee, too, so that I will have a future here.”
All of them exemplify a different kind of worker in a different kind of plant for a Detroit automaker.
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This state-of-the-art manufacturing complex in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia is not only the centerpiece of Ford's Brazilian turnaround plan, it is also one of the most advanced automobile plants in the world. It is more automated than many of Ford's U.S. factories, and leaner and more flexible than any other Ford facility. It can produce five different vehicle platforms at the same time and on the same line.
Ford sources said it is the sort of plant the company wants in the United States, were it not for the United Auto Workers, which has historically opposed such extensive supplier integration on the factory floor. . .
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070822/AUTO01/708220407/1148
Brazil, home of Lula? The guy who blames blond white men with blue eyes for the global melt down? I hope your eyes are brown. ;)
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