According to just-auto.com, Ford was forced to send some of its workers from the Dearborn assembly plant home, because they had nothing to do. The shortage is caused by the fact that one of Ford's suppliers, swamped by the huge orders coming from the car maker, reached capacity.
The car maker did not name the supplier in question, but did admit it ran out of parts for the 3.7le V6 and the 3.5l EcoBoost V6 engine, manufactured in Cleveland. So far, said Ford, no other models or production facilities have been affected by the problems experienced by the suppliers.
The assembly plant was shut down intermittently in the past week, alerting analysts of a yet overseen problem: having cut workforce and closed plant in 2009, suppliers have been taken by surprise by the fast recovery and are now struggling to get back what they gave up during the crisis.
"Suppliers took a lot of capacity out to get through the downturn," Ford spokesman Todd Nissen was quoted as saying by Freep. "As volumes have increased for our new, high-volume products, suppliers have had some issues keeping up."
This bizarre situation is expected to continue in the months to come, with many warning that things might get worse.
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