Ford CEO Farley Regrets Not Tackling Quality Issues Sooner

It’s no secret that Ford has faced plenty of quality woes over the past few years, ones that made it the most recalled automotive manufacturer in the U.S. in 2023. Ford CEO Jim Farley is well aware of this fact, noting that the company has made improving quality a priority, and proceeding to set varying “best-in-class quality” targets for its vehicle lineup in that regard. Farley previously blamed this downward trend on corporate inefficiencies that disappeared and wound up growing back, and chairman Bill Ford later noted that he’s pleased with the actions the company’s CEO has taken to right the proverbial ship. However, while speaking at the recent 2024 Wolfe Conference, Farley admitted that he didn’t act aggressively enough – or perhaps soon enough – to rectify these problems before they grew.

“So, in line with that, I wished I had had the same laser focus on transforming our industrial system,” Farley said. “The capability atrophy in engineering, supply chain and manufacturing in Ford, John and I talk about this every day was much more – needed a much more fundamental reset than I had realized. And if I had – if we had approached same vigor that we restructured and got out of India, restructured South America, restructured China, restructured Europe, if we had approached, as a management team, tackling the industrial system at Ford the same vigor, and is actually a quite different execution, would have required a quite different execution. It’s not just getting rid of people – we’ve got rid of 20,000 people – it wasn’t that. It’s a totally different muscle.”

“I think you would have a much stronger Ford. We would have a much stronger base. The irony of that, though, is that if we had done that quicker, would we have really trusted that organization to disrupt itself like we have? I think one of the biggest gifts, turns out one of the biggest gifts the management team has given ourselves, is the small skunkworks team, who really came up with a way of executing an affordable platform with a completely different orientation that my industrial team would have never been able to do. So it’s not perfect, but, yes, I think we all have regrets. And that’s a big one for me. So a humbling thing.”

This admission comes on the heels of Farley noting that it could take a number of years to completely correct Ford’s quality woes, though that process is already underway. In fact, starting with the launch of the redesigned 2023 Ford Super Duty, the automaker began shutting down production when it identifies a problem, then proceeding to fix it before restarting assembly lines – a process that has since been emulated with multiple new vehicle launches.

We’ll have more on Ford’s quality push soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for continuous Ford news coverage.