While Ford’s initial quality has improved somewhat over the past year or so, the automaker is still shelling out a significant amount of money in terms of warranty costs – which CEO Jim Farley recently blamed on SYNC-related problems. The automaker has taken a number of steps to rectify this big problem as of late, ranging from delaying the launch of refreshed and redesigned models to tying management bonuses directly to quality, but now, Ford is also appointing a new head of quality as its warranty costs continue to spiral out of control.
Jim Baumbick
According to Reuters, Ford will replace Jim Baumbick – the company’s current head of quality – with an as-of-now-unnamed individual in early 2025. Baumbick will assume responsibility of Ford’s vehicle programs team, which focuses on keeping the costs and timing of vehicles on track, in addition to existing responsibilities such as product development operations. A Ford spokesperson noted that this change will allow the company to “collaborate and work more efficiently to deliver exciting vehicles and software with the highest levels of quality for our customers.”
In addition to being slapped with a $165 million dollar civil penalty from the NHTSA recently over its failure to recall vehicles affected by rearview camera issues promptly, Ford’s warranty expenses increased by $800 million in Q2 2024 versus the same period one year prior, a problem that has impacted its stock performance – though that’s largely due to issues with vehicles that launched in 2021 or before. Farley previously stated that he “regrets” not tackling the automaker’s quality woes sooner, though FoMoCo current ranks second in terms of recalls issued in 2024 thus far – behind only Stellantis.
“After three years of hard work fixing all of our deficits, we now have everything in place to really see our quality turn for our customers and for our business,” Farley told reporters at an event last week, highlighting “execution” as his top concern for 2025.
Comments
What a joke
Indeed. Worked there for over 30 years. Every couple of years we would hear the same exact quality message. And over and over nothing happened.
Another useless position.
Stop focusing on EVs, blindly. Maybe that will help.
I missed any reference to electric vehicles in this article.
Paying attention to the details and product development are not either/or. Both are important if Ford wants to improve the quality of their products.
So very very glad there doing this…finally…they need a engineer with common sense….to fix and go in hard….the prevous person was a JD Power guy….wrong person for the job…they need someone that crack the whip…and make there products simplier….not having to make a mechanic have to buy a special tool to install brake pads….simpler engines…they have enough warrany repair info….and see all te issues on repairing Ford Products…to know what needs fixing…without needing a reseach team….
What do you have against using proper punctuation?
Wow….someone who thinks this is a high school spelling bee….
They will probably just start denying warranty claims. That will lower their cost.
The “quality” problem lies solely in the executive suite in the glass house
Typical Farley, lots of talk and no execution. It took 4 years to take some action?
Simple> Just build quality, its 7th HS grade level.