Ford Motor Co. has scheduled downtime across much of its North American manufacturing footprint this week, a sign of the more than year-long global semiconductor shortage’s continued impact on the automotive industry.
This week, Ford’s Michigan Assembly in Wayne, Chicago Assembly and Cuautitlan Stamping and Assembly Plant in Mexico will be down. F-150 production at Kansas City Assembly in Missouri will be down. And Dearborn Truck and Kansas City Transit production will run on one shift, according to the company.
Cuautitlan builds the all-electric Mustang-Mach E. Chicago Assembly assembles the Ford Explorer, Police Interceptor Utility and Lincoln Aviator. Dearborn Truck builds the F-150 pickup truck. Kansas City builds both the F-150 and Transit cargo van. And Michigan Assembly assembles the Ford Bronco and Ranger.
“The global semiconductor shortage continues to affect Ford’s North American plants — along with automakers and other industries around the world,” spokesperson Kelli Felker said in a statement. “Behind the scenes, we have teams working on how to maximize production, with a continued commitment to building every high-demand vehicle for our customers with the quality they expect.”
Reuters reported Friday that the automaker’s two plants in Louisville and one in Ontario also would be affected, but Ford declined further comment.
The production cuts come after Ford executives told Wall Street analysts last week that while they expect global production volumes to improve 10% to 15% this year compared with last year, they expect continued supply-chain disruptions, particularly in the first quarter.
As of Friday, Ford had lost an estimated 48,566 units of planned production in North America so far this year, according to forecasting firm AutoForecast Solutions, which says the Dearborn automaker lost about 935,000 vehicles to the chip shortage last year.
The pandemic-induced semiconductor shortage has affected auto production around the world, slashing outputs and leading to higher vehicle prices and historically low inventory levels. Experts and industry executives have said they expect the shortage to continue through this year, but to ease. The shortage cost the industry more than 10 million units of lost production last year, according to AutoForecast Solutions.
jgrzelewski@detroitnews.com
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