Another Ford milestone no one was expecting

[Ohio XB]

I received a letter today stating that the Econoline full-sized van that we build at the plant I work at has achieved a 61.2/1000 rating of "repairs at 3 months in service". This was in October of 2008.

Year to date rating for the same characteristic was 71.2/1000. There was an increase because in September we started building a new model year vehicle with quite a bit of changes.


So what does all this mean?

Basically, to begin with, Ford is in a dead heat in quality with the best in the business, overall. The "TGW", or "Things Gone Wrong" level for Initial Quality is about 1.2 per vehicle among the top quality producers, Ford included.

The Econoline is at a quality level of .061 warrantee repairs per vehicle at 3 months in service. I don't know that this level of quality has ever been achieved in the US before, or at least by any company building vehicles here.

Benny Fowler, the head Quality guy at Ford, stated last year that Ford was going to achieve a .850 TGW Initial Quality rating on their vehicles in order to surpass the competition, a level never before achieved by anyone. Many laughed.


Well, we're getting the last laugh.

Or plant recently received the award for the Best In Class by J.D. Power and Associates, a Superior Quality award from U-Haul, Ford's #1 fleet customer, and now a company award for the lowest warrantee repairs (r/1000) in North America. U-Haul also announced that they were going to be replacing their aged GM trucks with Ford F-550's because of this quality demonstration.



It's real.

Steve