BROOK PARK, OHIO -- An idled Ford engine plant that executives once thought about closing completed its transformation as the auto maker's most modern engine plant when it officially reopened this week.
The Ford Engine Plant No. 1 in this Cleveland suburb is now filled with sophisticated new equipment that, coupled with a new manufacturing system, Ford hopes will give it a big competitive advantage.
"It is potentially very significant," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in labour issues.
In the 1970s, about 4,500 workers made up to 4,000 engines a day at the plant, producing 4.9-litre, six-cylinder engines for trucks and 5.0-litre, V-8 engines for Mustangs.
But the engines made too much pollution and generated too few miles per gallon to compete with higher-tech engines and more demanding government regulations.
By the fall of 1996, production of the 4.9-litre engine ended, leaving the remaining 600 workers making the V-8 wondering whether they would have a job, said Mark Payne, United Auto Workers Local 1250's building chairman for Engine Plant No. 1.
In 1999, union officials persuaded Ford that hourly workers wanted to build a high-quality product and that they would co-operate with management.
The result: Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford committed $350-million (U.S.) to renovate the 53-year-old plant and build a new, improved version of the Duratec 3.0 V-6 produced nearby at Engine Plant No. 2.
The last V-8 engine was made in December of 2000. About 34 million engines have been made at the plant.
The renovated plant is expected to make 325,000 V-6 engines a year that will be put in three new models arriving this fall: The 2005 Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego sedans and the Ford Freestyle.
The plant has 600 hourly workers now and should add 150 to 200 workers this September, when a second shift is added, Payne said.
