Ford Louisville Assembly Plant Will Build Vehicles Faster

We’ve known for some time that the Louisville Assembly plant will be retooled later this year in preparation for the production of future EV models, starting with a mid-size pickup riding on the automaker’s new, low-cost, universal platform. The Blue Oval officially revealed these plans nearly one month ago, touting the fact that Louisville’s retooling will utilize a far more efficient production process once all that work is complete. Turns out, those upgrades will also make the process of assembling vehicles faster, too.

“The platform would allow us to assemble the new mid-size electric truck 40 percent faster than Louisville Assembly Plant’s current products,” said Bryce Currie, Ford vice president of Americas manufacturing. “We reinvested some of that time into insourcing and automation to improve quality and cost. That decision will give Louisville Assembly Plant the highest level of automation in final assembly across all Ford plants globally, and it means assembly of the mid-size truck will ultimately net out at 15 percent faster than Louisville Assembly today. ”

Ford is investing a whopping $2 billion into the Louisville Assembly plant to make this happen. As part of that process, the plant will expand by 52,000 additional square feet, which will enable materials to move more efficiently. Ford will also give the facility a variety of digital infrastructure upgrades that will reportedly result in it having the fastest network with the most access points of any Ford plant across the entire globe – enabling more quality scans.

This new universal Ford EV production system is quite a bit different than a regular assembly line in many ways, as it’s laser-focused on improving efficiency throughout that process – largely by transforming the traditional assembly line into an “assembly tree.” This means that rather than utilizing one, long conveyer, Ford will employ three subassemblies running down their own lines at the same time, which then join together. From there, Ford has replaced dozens of smaller parts with large, single-piece aluminum unicastings, which gives it the ability to assemble the front and rear of vehicles separately.