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Ford recalled 18 vehicles. It knew exactly which ones had the problem. Pretty interesting.

Neil44 4y ago
I've toured a couple of car plants because I find them really interesting - Porsche, Mini - the level of refinement, sophistication and tracability of their ERP is always staggering.
- koofdoof 4y ago
  Do you need special connections to tour one? I would love to go, but I assume it would be difficult as a member of the public.
  - ketkev 4y ago
    I believe Volkswagen's Wolfsburg factory is open for tours
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    You can tour the Ford River Rouge truck factory, which is where they make the F-150 and F-150 Lightning (PS you can spend an entire weekend at the Henry Ford complex - the whole thing is outstanding): https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/highlights/assembly-plant-tour/ https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/h... I went on a tour of the VW Dresden factory back when it produced the Phaeton and Bentley Continental. It looks like they currently produce the ID.3 there and are still doing tours: https://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/your-visit/our-tours.html https://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/your-visit/our-tours.h...
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    At Mercedes-Benz we offer factory tours you can just sign up for. Agree with OP, well worth it! Developing and iteratively refining a production line from pilot factory to network scale is not entirely unlike software development. Here's a few clips of a modern one, including a longer doc: https://youtu.be/UdDvDKC8FVM https://youtu.be/UdDvDKC8FVM & https://youtu.be/TWLyRQbvr6o https://youtu.be/TWLyRQbvr6o
  - Neil44 4y ago
    Anyone can sign up for the Porsche factory in Stuttgart, Germany or the MINI plant in Oxford UK, there are probably many others too. Stuttgart is really dominated by Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, there's an giant M-B star on the town's big clock tower. It's a very business-y town but a nice visit for a car nut.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    While I was an exchange student in Germany, my cohort got a tour of an Audi factory. That was 23 years ago, though.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry, manufacturers record the tension with which each screw is torqued. That kind of fine grained logging is required for maintenance reasons and audited in case of e.g. accidents. Some modern car manufacturers use a similar level of detail in their manufacturing records. Common in both worlds is having very complex supply networks and just in time deliveries for these parts.
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    > This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry I remember reading an account of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, where it was stated the investigation was hampered by the lack of serial numbers on some components, such as the astronauts' chairs. This made it hard to reconstruct the breakup sequence from the geographical distribution of the debris.
londons_explore 4y ago
If I were designing a production line, every step of the process would record video footage of every part being made, tested, and fitted. Then, if any quality issue is identified, the footage can be checked to see exactly which cells that went into which cars were faulty. It's far quicker to check 30 seconds of video to verify that a worker remembered to tighten some critical bolts than to recall the car and have a service technician pull the whole thing apart to find that this car was fine after all.
- sbradford26 4y ago
  Processes like that work for bespoke things like the mars rovers and satellites. But for a mass produced product you will quickly run into a scale and storage issue. Ford is planning on making 150000 F150 Lightnings so around 400+ per day. With ever step expected to be completed in a couple minutes you are going to have to track tens of thousands of videos clips per day and store and archive them. Then for recall work you will have store the videos for around 15 years. The cost to maintain all of that infrastructure and storage is most likely not worth it.
  - thakoppno 4y ago
    > The cost to maintain all of that infrastructure and storage is most likely not worth it. Your analysis is likely correct; but at the same time, a system like this has never been more affordable, possible. Also, imagine getting a video of your brand new car’s construction at the time of purchase.
    - sbradford26 4y ago
      So Ford is providing pictures for people who ordered Ford Broncos currently. And for a method of keeping customers interested in the vehicle they ordered I think it is a really good tactic. https://www.motor1.com/news/542024/ford-bronco-assembly-line-photos/ https://www.motor1.com/news/542024/ford-bronco-assembly-line...
    - detrites 4y ago
      I wonder how well some kind of bespoke batch-processing video codec would work on production line footage where the endless repeats of the same mechanical motions continue for hours and across days/weeks? Encode only the difference between cycles.
xattt 4y ago
Also interesting but pure speculation is that you probably can extrapolate sales and delivery numbers up to the point of the recall.
consp 4y ago
Had a similar issue with another other Ford vehicle with a battery, there were 729 vehicles worldwide. They knew exactly what was wrong: error in a temperature sensor of a specific welding unit which which could result in a damaged busbar over time due to the poor weld. The vehicles were worldwide, mine was originally from Germany but that causes issues: I never received an email/mail from anyone as it went to the original dealer which did not know me. I did get a warning though the local DMV equivalent so that worked correctly but by then it was already fixed as I read the ford service site from time-to-time. Was replaced without cost as with this thing, no questions asked. Though the garage failed to bleed the cooling system (they said they did, but you can see if they did it in the Ford online systems, they didn't), resulting in the vehicle stopping once an air bubble reached the coolant pump and it overrotated (it will run for about 30 seconds before stopping). In my case this also means I got a new battery after two years which is nice, but Ford probably tried to talk their way out of it thus it taking so long. If it's not a fire hazard it goes slowly ...
- kubectl_h 4y ago
  When I bought my truck (used, from a non-Ford dealer) I immediately signed up for a ford.com account and registered my truck with them. I've received all recalls and "customer satisfaction program" notifications from them since. I also had the truck routinely serviced at a few different dealerships until I found one that seemed no-frills and have used them ever since. Whenever I take the truck in for an oil change they will check for a pending TSB and ask if I want it done.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    My experience with Nissan is they will do the former, but dealerships will not do the later. With Honda it was the opposite, the dealership would always ask to perform repairs I had no knowledge of.
- bragadiru_mafia 4y ago
  The Kuga plugin hybrid? Very nice vehicle.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
Barcodes containing batch or unique serial numbers (laser etching is common in auto part supply chains), along with good manufacturing records is how the scope of a recall such as this is contained. In the food industry, a portion of cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) covers traceability. Not sure what the practice is called in the Auto Industry but I’m sure raw material tracing is a part of their practice.
- icegreentea2 4y ago
  Yes. It's not just Ford which had good records here, their battery vendor must have had great tracking to limit the blast radius so much. Though potentially they just all got lucky and caught a problem early enough that most units with the problem batteries haven't left Ford control yet.
  - CodeWriter23 4y ago
    Of course, the supplier would have to have some SOPs to say how to make the assemblies and then a QA department to catch the Deviation and write it up.
guestbest 4y ago
Every electric truck has a centralized computer that calls home for ‘updates’ with a GPS. Pretty simple

I've toured a couple of car plants because I find them really interesting - Porsche, Mini - the level of refinement, sophistication and tracability of their ERP is always staggering.

koofdoof 4y ago
Do you need special connections to tour one? I would love to go, but I assume it would be difficult as a member of the public.
- ketkev 4y ago
  I believe Volkswagen's Wolfsburg factory is open for tours
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  You can tour the Ford River Rouge truck factory, which is where they make the F-150 and F-150 Lightning (PS you can spend an entire weekend at the Henry Ford complex - the whole thing is outstanding): https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/highlights/assembly-plant-tour/ https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/h... I went on a tour of the VW Dresden factory back when it produced the Phaeton and Bentley Continental. It looks like they currently produce the ID.3 there and are still doing tours: https://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/your-visit/our-tours.html https://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/your-visit/our-tours.h...
- sho_hn 4y ago
  At Mercedes-Benz we offer factory tours you can just sign up for. Agree with OP, well worth it! Developing and iteratively refining a production line from pilot factory to network scale is not entirely unlike software development. Here's a few clips of a modern one, including a longer doc: https://youtu.be/UdDvDKC8FVM https://youtu.be/UdDvDKC8FVM & https://youtu.be/TWLyRQbvr6o https://youtu.be/TWLyRQbvr6o
- Neil44 4y ago
  Anyone can sign up for the Porsche factory in Stuttgart, Germany or the MINI plant in Oxford UK, there are probably many others too. Stuttgart is really dominated by Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, there's an giant M-B star on the town's big clock tower. It's a very business-y town but a nice visit for a car nut.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  While I was an exchange student in Germany, my cohort got a tour of an Audi factory. That was 23 years ago, though.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry, manufacturers record the tension with which each screw is torqued. That kind of fine grained logging is required for maintenance reasons and audited in case of e.g. accidents. Some modern car manufacturers use a similar level of detail in their manufacturing records. Common in both worlds is having very complex supply networks and just in time deliveries for these parts.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > This is pretty common in industries like this. In the aviation industry I remember reading an account of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, where it was stated the investigation was hampered by the lack of serial numbers on some components, such as the astronauts' chairs. This made it hard to reconstruct the breakup sequence from the geographical distribution of the debris.

londons_explore 4y ago

If I were designing a production line, every step of the process would record video footage of every part being made, tested, and fitted. Then, if any quality issue is identified, the footage can be checked to see exactly which cells that went into which cars were faulty. It's far quicker to check 30 seconds of video to verify that a worker remembered to tighten some critical bolts than to recall the car and have a service technician pull the whole thing apart to find that this car was fine after all.

sbradford26 4y ago
Processes like that work for bespoke things like the mars rovers and satellites. But for a mass produced product you will quickly run into a scale and storage issue. Ford is planning on making 150000 F150 Lightnings so around 400+ per day. With ever step expected to be completed in a couple minutes you are going to have to track tens of thousands of videos clips per day and store and archive them. Then for recall work you will have store the videos for around 15 years. The cost to maintain all of that infrastructure and storage is most likely not worth it.
- thakoppno 4y ago
  > The cost to maintain all of that infrastructure and storage is most likely not worth it. Your analysis is likely correct; but at the same time, a system like this has never been more affordable, possible. Also, imagine getting a video of your brand new car’s construction at the time of purchase.
  - sbradford26 4y ago
    So Ford is providing pictures for people who ordered Ford Broncos currently. And for a method of keeping customers interested in the vehicle they ordered I think it is a really good tactic. https://www.motor1.com/news/542024/ford-bronco-assembly-line-photos/ https://www.motor1.com/news/542024/ford-bronco-assembly-line...
  - detrites 4y ago
    I wonder how well some kind of bespoke batch-processing video codec would work on production line footage where the endless repeats of the same mechanical motions continue for hours and across days/weeks? Encode only the difference between cycles.

xattt 4y ago

Also interesting but pure speculation is that you probably can extrapolate sales and delivery numbers up to the point of the recall.

consp 4y ago

Had a similar issue with another other Ford vehicle with a battery, there were 729 vehicles worldwide. They knew exactly what was wrong: error in a temperature sensor of a specific welding unit which which could result in a damaged busbar over time due to the poor weld. The vehicles were worldwide, mine was originally from Germany but that causes issues: I never received an email/mail from anyone as it went to the original dealer which did not know me. I did get a warning though the local DMV equivalent so that worked correctly but by then it was already fixed as I read the ford service site from time-to-time. Was replaced without cost as with this thing, no questions asked. Though the garage failed to bleed the cooling system (they said they did, but you can see if they did it in the Ford online systems, they didn't), resulting in the vehicle stopping once an air bubble reached the coolant pump and it overrotated (it will run for about 30 seconds before stopping). In my case this also means I got a new battery after two years which is nice, but Ford probably tried to talk their way out of it thus it taking so long. If it's not a fire hazard it goes slowly ...

kubectl_h 4y ago
When I bought my truck (used, from a non-Ford dealer) I immediately signed up for a ford.com account and registered my truck with them. I've received all recalls and "customer satisfaction program" notifications from them since. I also had the truck routinely serviced at a few different dealerships until I found one that seemed no-frills and have used them ever since. Whenever I take the truck in for an oil change they will check for a pending TSB and ask if I want it done.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  My experience with Nissan is they will do the former, but dealerships will not do the later. With Honda it was the opposite, the dealership would always ask to perform repairs I had no knowledge of.
bragadiru_mafia 4y ago
The Kuga plugin hybrid? Very nice vehicle.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

Barcodes containing batch or unique serial numbers (laser etching is common in auto part supply chains), along with good manufacturing records is how the scope of a recall such as this is contained. In the food industry, a portion of cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) covers traceability. Not sure what the practice is called in the Auto Industry but I’m sure raw material tracing is a part of their practice.

icegreentea2 4y ago
Yes. It's not just Ford which had good records here, their battery vendor must have had great tracking to limit the blast radius so much. Though potentially they just all got lucky and caught a problem early enough that most units with the problem batteries haven't left Ford control yet.
- CodeWriter23 4y ago
  Of course, the supplier would have to have some SOPs to say how to make the assemblies and then a QA department to catch the Deviation and write it up.

guestbest 4y ago

Every electric truck has a centralized computer that calls home for ‘updates’ with a GPS. Pretty simple