Ford is meeting with suppliers

Automaker wants to repair supplier relations

By Tom Stundza -- Purchasing, 1/30/2008 8:58:00 AM

Ford Motor Co. leaders—global product chief Derrick Kuzak and purchasing chief Tony Brown—will go on a listening tour of suppliers early this year in a bid to repair fractured relationships, according to Automotive News, a Detroit-based weekly subscription-only publication. Ford CEO Alan Mulally says he may attend some meetings with CEOs at many major parts makers.

The sessions are a direct response to Ford's dismal results in several industry surveys of supplier-automaker relationships, including one conducted for Automotive News by J.D. Power and Associates. Ford finished last among automakers and scored low in every category of that survey, released in the spring of 2007.

Earlier this month, United Press International reported that top executives from Ford met with automotive parts suppliers involved in the redesigned F-150 pickup. The meetings were considered critical as the automaker prepares to take the revamped version of its top seller and rallies suppliers to help ensure smooth production start-ups at two assembly plants this summer, The Detroit News reported

Ford executives still are counting on the two-year-old Aligned Business Framework program to improve collaboration by trimming the number of Ford's suppliers and working more closely with those that remained. Reports from Detroit say the plan isn’t working and that’s what has triggered the meetings between suppliers and the Ford executives.

Mulally told Automotive News that improving collaboration is crucial because suppliers manage 60% of the dollar value of Ford's vehicles. Only through a seamless partnership can Ford and its suppliers achieve quality, productivity and cost-reduction goals, he says, since Ford is looking for as much as $1.2 billion in supplier-related material cost reductions in 2008.