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The video consists of a background narrator and four speakers, which are as follows:
Speaker 1: Hugh Walborn, Warehouse Manager, SY Systems Technologies.
Speaker 2: Andy Shashlo, Manufacturing Lead, Ford Chicago Assembly Plant.
Speaker 3: Matt Baron, Interim Plant Manager, SY Systems Technologies.
Speaker 4: Mike Paul, Quality Manager, SY Systems Technologies.
Subtle background music is being played at the start and end of the video.
Narrator: "These new vehicles have a lot to offer, including very sophisticated electronic components and wiring. They all come from Ford's renovated Chicago assembly plant. The plant contains the newest flexible machine tooling and lean manufacturing strategies. Chicago assembly produces three new vehicles. The Ford five hundred, Ford Freestyle, and Mercury Montego. An innovative new supplier park was added in conjunction with the plant's renovation. The one hundred and fifty-five acre Chicago manufacturing campus is located about one-half mile east of the plant. Residing here are approximately nine tier-one and tier-two production suppliers plus logistics and tooling companies. The suppliers provide sixty percent of the plant's inventory with just-in-time deliveries."
The visual shows the content spoken by the narrator through video clips, animations, or images. Initially, as the narrator speaks, the visual showcases a dynamic video clip featuring a Ford car in a vibrant red color, cruising on the roads of Chicago. As the narrator discusses the sophisticated electronic components, the visual seamlessly transitions to reveal the interior of a car. In the next visual, a photograph of the Chicago Assembly Plant is displayed, featuring two Ford company cars. The visual then transitions to showcase the various robot machines within the assembly plant. In the subsequent visual, a video clip presents the exterior of a Ford showroom. As the narrator addresses the introduction of three new vehicles, the visual showcases captivating photographs of the Ford Five Hundred, Ford Freestyle, and Mercury Montego in separate slides. When the narrator mentions the new supplier park, the visual transitions to showcase the supplier park itself, accompanied by a Chicago Manufacturing Campus map displayed on a board. This demonstrates the integration of different aspects within the manufacturing ecosystem. In the next visual, the Chicago Manufacturing Campus is shown from an exterior perspective, providing a glimpse of the scale and infrastructure of the facility. As the narrator discusses tier-one and tier-two production suppliers, the visuals present a series of photographs showcasing employees working with various tools and equipment. Finally, as the narrator mentions that suppliers provide sixty percent, the visual seamlessly transitions to a video clip featuring a skilled worker operating a forklift, efficiently moving, and placing items in different locations.
Hugh Walborn: "It's the first time in the United States that suppliers to an automotive company are located virtually half a mile from the assembly plant and supplying in a very much just-in-time sequenced basis to the assembly plant to promote the flexible manufacturing at Ford assembly plant."
Narrator: "Ford's Rouge plant was once famous for building an entire car from scratch, tires and all. Today, Ford has suppliers who specialize in assembling complex components with the help of many sub-suppliers."
Andy Shashlo: "What we've done with the supplier campus? Number one, we've created a flow environment. Number two is we've taken traditional assemblies that we would do in-house and manage all of the logistics for those parts, and we've given them to the supplier who has and we call them the full-service supplier who has the expertise in making that particular module. The very nature of the assembly necessitated that they be close because the logistics costs of moving them and the implications of building them in sequence required and the implications of flowing into the plant required that they be very close and so twelve of these suppliers needed to be very close so we coordinated them through the supplier campus. When we started with the Taurus Sable program, we had roughly around ten commodities that we did that with. Currently, we're at seventy-seven different commodities that are sequenced into the plant flow into the plant just-in-time, which really changes the way we manage inventory, the way we manage logistics."
The visual begins with a video clip featuring Hugh Walborn. Hugh is shown in his office, dressed in formal attire, sharing valuable information about his company. As the narrator speaks, the visual shifts to an old black-and-white photograph depicting the Ford Rouge plant, where numerous employees are seen working on the cars. When the narrator discusses complex components, the visual transitions to showcase a woman carefully extracting a wiring component from its packaging and placing it into the next box. The visual then transitions to showcase Andy Shashlo. Andy is seated in his office, dressed in formal attire, providing valuable insights about the company. As Andy speaks, the visual incorporates parallel video clips. The first clip shows employees working with different components. The second video clip showcases the exterior of the assembly plant.
Narrator: "The park also allows for easy cross-tier supplier relationships, though it wasn't part of the plan."
Andy Shashlo: "What we found is that the proximity of the suppliers to us also meant that they were close to each other and afforded an opportunity for them to start sourcing from each other so suppliers that were tier-one suppliers or primary suppliers to us became primary suppliers to someone else who was a primary supplier to us so they were also secondary suppliers or tier-two to us. And we found there was a lot of that happening without Ford even controlling that or managing that. For instance, we will go to Visteon for the instrument panel, and the main wiring harness from Visteon was coming from Siemens Yazaki, who happened to be right next door, saving me all the logistics costs involved with shipping the wiring harness halfway around the world or from Mexico or wherever it may be. Visteon reap the benefits of having Siemens Yazaki sitting right next door, they are able to pull in the main wiring harness in sequence by the way."
As the narrator speaks, a video clip shows the assembly plant's majestic exterior. In the next visual, Andy Shaslo continues to share valuable information as described in description 2. As Andy speaks, the visual transitions to showcase the exteriors of prominent companies such as Visteon and Siemens Yazaki.
Matt Baron: "What that does for Ford and for the suppliers, first for Ford is of course it cuts the cost down. They pay for less freight. They have better faster response times for issues with the plant or quality or changes in line. For the suppliers we have more limited manufacturing, more dedicated resources plus supply chain also leadership of products were close to Ford. S-Y Systems is a joint venture between Siemens, VDO which is a German-based company, and Yazaki manufacturing over in Japan. Yazaki is known for the wire harness manufacturing. Siemens is known for electronics. What it does? The joint venture brings those both together in terms of our design team integrates both the component side, the control modules, the smart junction boxes, other parts of the vehicle with the wire harness manufacturing, and it puts in S-Y's duty or responsibly for the whole package and more. Wire harness is a very, very manually creative. There is very little automation in wire harnesses base because of the multi-turnings, different kind of bundling the wiring, the taping, the complexity of the wire harness, it's hard to automate that. There's certain things they automate like cutting, crimping the terminals on the wires, but everything else is all manual. So it's usually built in low-income, low-economic countries in terms of labor Indonesia, Philippines, Nicaragua, and some still Mexico, but Mexico is kind of rising prices for labor. With that, there is some supply chain problems with that. Our pipeline from Asia is about eight weeks of time. I mentioned before releases coming to the customer maybe three or four weeks firm out there in terms of they don't change very much. They do give us longer forecast, but those numbers vary greatly, so with a long supply pipeline, there’s a unique problems in terms of low levels of build, what quantity to build, how many to build is a probable question. It takes a lot more of a planning side in terms of getting parts in-house on time. Visteon supplies the front-end module or the radiator area for Ford. Our harness goes in that front-end module. They also supply the instrument panel or the IP for the Ford vehicle, and add wire harness in that. They also manufacture the gas tanks here, and we actually have gas tanks send their wire harness that we actually supply to Visteon here. We also supply Leer. They build the headliners of the vehicles or the things above your head where the vents or the DVDs or the fabric above your head there is a wire harness for dome lights are. We supply that harness for them. We also supply Brose. They are a German-based company that does the doors, the power windows, the power door locks. We supply harnesses to them to make that door assembly. Those are all the customers in the warehouse or they are in the environment here we ship to. We also ship to Leer in the Hammond, Indiana area which is about twenty minutes from here. They build the seats for the vehicle. We supply the harnesses for the seats and those are going to Ford directly from there. We also supply Cleveland Engine. Cleveland Engine makes the engines for the vehicles. We supply those harnesses to Cleveland Engine which then ships the whole engine components to Ford for assembling the vehicle. We do just-in-time sequencing to Ford in terms of we supply to Ford based on how they want to run the vehicles in the line, we ship parts to Visteon, how they are going to run the vehicles off their parts in the line, and we have two days inventory here, and with that our supply chain is much shorter. Our response time is much faster, and we have the benefit of more customer interface. We have a whole side of the building that's basically dedicated to Visteon supply chain and the Ford supply chain. What I mean by that, we have three sequencing cells that basically meet the Visteon to harness needs and the Ford main harness need in terms of we have to sell that sequence as parts for them. The other half of the building is basically high rack store, the typical warehouse environment that would have racks, steel racks with locations that you put product to store. We supply other customers with the high rack storage that's bulk shipment for our Leer or our Cleveland Engine or other suppliers in the park. Back in the warehouse is a normal warehouse with docked doors There inbound, outbounds coming in and out of, and then the front office is the support for the systems, the releases, the customer interfaces are all in the front side of the office."
The visual begins with a video clip featuring Matt Baron. Matt Baron is seated in his office, dressed in formal attire, and shares insightful details about his company. As Matt speaks, the visual complements his narration by showcasing various visuals that align with his statements. Throughout the visual, Matt provides an overview of his company, discussing its background, key partnerships, and other pertinent information.
Narrator: "Here bolster area operators are sequencing harnesses. The operator begins the process by scanning the blend label. He goes over to the box and scans the handling unit number. He pulls the part out of the box and brings it back to the work cart and scans the part number. After scanning the part number, he adheres the blend label to the harness. Then he sequences it into the cell, and he scans the cart's cell number to ensure the proper position. When he finishes with the cart, he sends it to Visteon on the AGC cart where the harnesses are applied to the back of the radiators. The S-Y warehouse pumps around the clock with three shifts, and the automatic guided carts keep whistling while they work."
The visual portrays two employees in a warehouse setting, with one of them holding a scanning device. The process begins as the employee retrieves a wiring component from a stack of boxes and proceeds to scan the unit number using the scanning device. With the part in hand, the employee places it onto a cart, scans the part number, and affixes a label to the component. The labeled part is then carefully positioned on a rack in the warehouse. Next, the visual shifts to showcase another employee who is loading items onto a cart. These items are destined for Visteon.
Mike Paul: "We run a true JIT system, its just-in-time. We have pretty much about a day, day and a half of inventory covered, and any hiccups in that flow, in that pipeline can really cause a big disturbance. If there is a reason, the customer is down is because of one of our senders something went array. It could be for quality. It could be a part storage. It could be many reasons why, but because we run so lean that they are dependent on us, a lot of businesses are going through this JIT type of manufacturing the supply. Supply chain is lessened. We're not doing as much carrying cost as far as on-hand product, and how important it is to go back to the basics know the details, know all the bits that you have to know about each sub-function about how they interact. I think that's the key thing from here is that it's not just a warehouse operation. There is other folks involved such as IT for information sharing, what is out there. Quality is obviously part of it because we touch the product. Time duration to do that, and at MPNL they get the material up and out of the door in a proper manner. So it's all they all have to work well together. If one goes out, they all go out."
The visual begins with a video clip featuring Mike Paul. Mike Paul is shown in his office, dressed in formal attire, sharing valuable information about his company. As Mike speaks, the visual presents a series of concurrent video clips to enhance understanding. The first visual focuses on employees within the warehouse, diligently working with various components. In the next visual, an employee is shown carefully affixing a label to a component before placing it into a rack. The visual flips to show a meeting room setting, where company officials gather to discuss matters pertaining to the organization. Lastly, the visual transitions to a dedicated employee, a woman, standing in front of a board, holding a pen, and actively participating in a discussion with her colleagues.
Narrator: "Delivering a wide variety of technical products with such lean inventory increases the potential for problems and costly delays. It requires extensive coordination and skilled managers. The sophisticated electrical components and wiring in these new vehicles are designed for modern conveniences and ease of use. What most drivers don't know is what makes all these possible, equally sophisticated operations management behind the scenes."
As the narrator speaks, the visual shows an employee working with a cart. In the next visual, employees of the company are shown in a discussion. As the narrator speaks about sophisticated electrical components, the visual shows the interior of the car as described in description 1. In the next visual, two employees are shown working on a desktop. On the last slide, the following details are shown. Executive Producer: Bruce N. Maclean, World Class Communication Technologies, LLC, Valparaiso, Indiana. Producer/Director: Paul D. Fagan. Avid Editor: Bob Gronowski. Copyright symbol, two thousand and five, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright information for each image in the video: Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
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Described transcript ©2023 McGraw Hill. All rights reserved. No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill.
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