Ford delays planned restart of its North American production plants

KUALA LUMPUR: With the outbreak of novel coronavirus, most of the countries have marked a decline in their economy. Several automakers have suspended their production and assembling facilities. Ford is one of them who had halted its manufacturing across the North American shores in mid-March with the plans to resume later in April. But due to the highest number of positive coronavirus cases in the USA, the firm has to drop out its plans of restarting the production anytime soon.

Earlier, Ford planned to resume the operations of the Hermosillo Assembly Plant on April 6 and several other important units on April 14. But, recently, the firm has declared that the planned restart of the factories has been delayed for the safety of its employees and community.

In this context, Kumar Galhotra, Ford president, North America said, “The health and safety of our workforce, dealers, customers, partners, and communities remain our highest priority. We are working very closely with union leaders – especially at the UAW – to develop additional health and safety procedures aimed at helping keep our workforce safe and healthy.”

Despite the announcement of indefinite closure, Ford has geared up to prepare its manufacturing units for the production of ventilators and medical equipment. To help the government in the fight against coronavirus pandemic, the firm aims to manufacture 50,000 ventilators in collaboration with GE Healthcare within 100 days starting April 20. The production of ventilators will be executed at the Ford’s Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. For this, 500 members of UAW union have volunteered to work.

Not only in the US, but Ford has also extended the suspension of production facilities in Europe till May 4. However, resumption totally depends on the pandemic situation in the country.

Also read: GM to deliver 1.5 million face masks per month