Ford's new world class plant in Brasil

Yep, at least in August of 2007. ;)

This is what the Japanese promised in the 1980s. A line with different products on it, and robotic systems that can perform different operations on different products, rather than just able to perform a single operation at each position.

A facility like this doesn't need a lot of unskilled labour, but it needs a small number of highly-trained people who can maintain the manufacturing systems. So it wouldn't seem that rural Brazil would be a good fit, but the honest truth is that this is one of the biggest markets and it's a growing one. Putting manufacturing close to the material supply and the customer base is the quickest route to reducing overhead.

--scott

That is an old article.....it is over 3 years old. I beleive Ford will now claim it's most modern plant is in Michigan. See:

"rural" hardly applies. Seems Camacari is over 200,000 and it's just outside Salvador with a metro population in excess of 3 million.

Possibly. It is good to know that foreign manufacturing facilities like this one have been and are being implemented. I used to live in Salvador, not far from Cama(s)ari. It is not, as mentioned before, exactly "rural". But I'll leave it at that ;>)

It takes a while, IMO, to get plants like this really operating efficiently. JIT deliveries seem to have been attacked in a slightly different way here, but that could also be an extremely weak point.

(My machine doesnt form cedilhas very easily)