Ford Mustang assembly line non-start defect

Parallel case to Motorola. New manager bans tow-motors from the end of the line — if a car doesn't start, push it. Within months, all cars start. Tom's lesson on management of manufacturing.

You think that's an isolated story? Ford Mustang plant. Billion-dollar facility, turning out one vehicle a minute off the end of the assembly line. This was around — by 1994, 1995 — actually this might have been the 1980s. I was doing some work for Ford, and the guy said let me take you over to the Mustang plant. He took me to the end of the line and said, it used to be that when you got to the end of the line they'd fill it with gasoline, you turn the key, and the guy was supposed to drive it into the parking lot to be loaded onto the trains to be shipped around the country. If it didn't start, you had one of the forklift trucks come and pull it out to the repair area so some mechanic could go out there and figure out how to get it started. Then you'd buy this semi-defective car because it finally got working.

Early 1990s. New manager eliminated tow motors for cars that wouldn't start at end-of-line; hourly workers had to push the cars 150 yards, complained to engineers, and engineers fixed the underlying defect. Parallel to the Motorola case: removing the slack defines the engineering effort applied to the defect rate.

There's another example from the early 90s. I had an LFM student working at Ford in Detroit, and we went to see the Mustang assembly line. I don't remember which plant — there are a lot of Ford plants in Detroit, thank God. When the cars would come off the line at the end of assembly, they were supposed to fill it with gas, turn the key, and a guy would drive it out into the parking lot for loading onto the railroad cars or trucks going to the dealerships. When a car wouldn't start, they'd bring in a tow motor — a forklift type of thing — and they would tow it out to another parking lot even further away, and leave it there until the mechanics could come by and figure out why it wouldn't start. A new manager came in and said, no more tow motors. If it doesn't start, you push.

New plant manager replaces tow motors with push-the-car-250-yards rule; defect rate collapses. Paired with the Motorola pager story as a second instance of incentive structure driving quality.

The exact same thing happened in a Ford Mustang plant. At the end of the line of assembling the vehicles, they filled them up with gas, and a guy was supposed to get in, turn the key, and drive it out to the lot to be loaded onto the railroad cars. If the car didn't start when he turned the key, they had a little tow motor vehicle come and pull the car out to the repair area to figure out why the engine wouldn't start. New plant manager came in. He says, "No more tow motors." They said, "What do you mean?" He said, "If it doesn't start, you push it all 250 yards to the repair area." You want to know something? The guys who had to push the cars made sure — those engineers made sure — that the cars started every time, and all of a sudden they were all starting. Once they gave them the proper incentive — either push it or start it — the problems went away. So it works not just in soldering but in Ford Mustangs. See you tomorrow.