First look inside Ford South Africa’s next-generation Ranger factory

Quality control intensified
In-house suppliers
What this means in simple numbers
Next-generation Ranger factory

Ford invested a substantial R15.8 billion into its South African operations in 2021 in preparation for building the next-generation Ranger more efficiently and to a higher quality than ever before.

Now almost at the end of the upgrades, and four months into production, the company gave TopAuto an exclusive first look at how it operates and where all the money went.

Quality control intensified

Ford’s massive investment was earmarked for a few key areas, with others to be enhanced at a later date when the first round of improvements is finished.

The largest portion of the funds went into a new body shop that is a replica of the one in Thailand, which is rated the top-performing Ford facility in the world.

This shop is four times the size of the old one and incorporates an all-new metal stamping machine, making the South African facility one of only a handful of Ford-owned stamping plants in the world.

Shaping its own panels vastly improves the quality and consistency of the parts allowing for tighter tolerances when they’re all put together, and it cuts down on waste metal.

Metal stamping die

The flow of vehicle assembly has also been changed for the purposes of quality control and a safer working environment for employees.

Before, the body would hang from a rail above as it moved through the building, and workers would attach individual bits and pieces until the final product was ready.

Now, the main parts of the bakkie including the engine, chassis, doors, box, cabin, and instrument panel (IP) are individually put together at their own substations and then combined on a conveyor belt with variable height settings that lift the car to the required height for the employee working on it.

The IP assembly line now also swivels 360 degrees for better access to all the plugs and connectors, and the doors are removed and individually painted thereby making it easier for workers to install the IP while the body is on the conveyor belt and reducing in-line damages to the car.

IP assembly line

The advantage of this reimagined modus operandi is two-fold.

The subassembly strategy improves quality as the separate components are now individually examined for imperfections before they are put into a whole.

Efficiency is boosted, too, since if one area of the factory is temporarily out of production due to unforeseen circumstances the rest can continue on schedule.

Apart from the general quality of life changes, automation in the plant is at a new all-time high.

The number of robots working on a vehicle has been upped from approximately 100 to over 300 which improves precision even further.

Just finding a place for these mechanical arms proved to be extremely complicated as they usually work in close proximity to one another and therefore must be synchronised to a tee. These robots exert tonnes of force and if one hits the other, it can rip it right out of the ground and cause immeasurable harm.

Robots welding Ranger flanks

The newfound interconnectedness means production is running smoother than ever.

From one worker’s station to the other, “just-in-time” trolleys are perfectly synchronised with the assembly line and arrive with all the parts needed for that particular car and whatever specification it’s being built in at the exact moment the semi-constructed body reaches that point.

The computers are even plugged into the tools and know which bolt will be fastened next and to which torque it must be fastened, and it calibrates the equipment accordingly. If for some reason it senses the bolt isn’t tight enough, which can happen in the case of slight misalignment, the assembly line won’t continue until the issue is sorted out.

Furthermore, where panel gaps and alignment were previously checked by the naked eye, Ford has now installed high-tech electronic measurement tools to ensure more consistency and fewer imperfections in its builds.

The incredible complexity of the entire system is necessary due to the vast combination of vehicles that can be produced under one roof. To give us a small idea of the intricacy, Ford said just a wing mirror for the Ranger has 169 different combinations to cater to all the features they support and markets the subsidiary services.

Money was further spent on building a new e-coating facility that gives the next-gen bakkies more resistance against rust, particularly under-body rust, over the course of long-term ownership – classified as 10 years or more.

All the parts needed to build a Ranger

Outside the body shop, you see a constant flow of recently-built bakkies completing a specific circuit in a specific way, this being the rattle and squeak track.

Here, trained experts drive the vehicles over a series of obstacles in a pre-determined pattern to listen for unwanted noises that must be removed before they leave the factory.

This track isn’t just similar to the one in Thailand, it’s absolutely identical right down to the height and pattern of the fake rocks, ensuring that an issue can be recreated at all Ranger plants for further inspection should one be picked up at any of the other locations it is assembled.

In Ford’s goal to achieve Island Mode, a significant sum also went into installing 13.8MW of solar panels which enables the company to actually sell electricity back to the grid instead of being fully reliant on it.

Squeak and rattle track

In-house suppliers

Another big sum of Ford’s initial investment went into bringing the majority of its suppliers into the adjacent Special Economic Zone (SEZ), with around 13 moving in during the first two phases of this process and another batch arriving in 2024.

Now, it’s as simple as walking across the road to talk to one of these companies if an issue arises, and Ford said it has resulted in significant savings in terms of delivery time and costs, too.

Another lesser-mentioned benefit of the nearby suppliers is the remarkable reduction in damages arising from driving sensitive components on poor roads across the city.

With the old way of doing things, parts such as doors, roofs, and bonnets would arrive at the Silverton plant with dings and scratches or be bent out of shape, requiring a team of employees whose permanent task it was to reshape the panels before they can be assembled. Now, this isn’t needed at all.

Further to the support of the SEZ businesses, Ford has appointed “supplier technical assistance engineers” whose job it is to check up and where necessary, assist suppliers in meeting their demands, which also gives the automaker better quality control from the very early steps of production which it didn’t have before.

A stack of unpainted roof panels

What this means in simple numbers

Reading about improved quality control measures and streamlined processes is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean much if the results can’t be summed up in numbers.

Fortunately, Ford has a stack of statistics it was eager to share with the public to prove its statement of an 80% improvement in overall quality from the old to the new Ranger.

To build a Ranger takes between 14-18 hours and over 1,000 employees touch it throughout the assembly line, with 180 quality assessment checks along the way.

One of the final stops before the bakkie exits the factory is the manicuring station, where the finer finishes and gaps are inspected and corrected if necessary.

For the old Ranger, this station usually had around 16 employees per vehicle doing the final touchups. For the new one, all of the upgrades have brought the number of manicurists down to two.

On top of this, parts traceability in the new high-tech Silverton facility is nearly at 100%, whereas it was previously around 20%, making it much easier to track potential manufacturing defects, and who could’ve been responsible for them, all the way back to the first unit that rolled through the doors.

Moreover, the “first time through” (FTT) and “launch repair spike” ratings for the new vehicles are better than ever.

While specific numbers couldn’t be shared, the company said its FTT score, which is the percentage of vehicles that make it through production the first time without being flagged for a potential defect, has improved by 50% in comparison to the old Ranger, and it aims to get it to an average of 96% which it said it’s very close to.

The launch repair spike, on the other hand, is a “spike” in repairs that usually comes after an all-new product is introduced to the market and thousands of owners start driving it and finding all its flaws.

Ford said it learned from the data of the past three to five years and found out what it did wrong with previous launches, and it’s proud to say the repair spike for the new Ranger is 60% better than for the old one.

Finally, Ford said these initiatives have seen the automaker’s “quality net promoter score” – which is a quality measurement based on customer feedback – rise by 12 points in three months, which is nearly unheard of. Usually, it said, this score only goes up by about two to three points annually.

These results were all achieved alongside upping production from around 80,000 units per year to over 200,000.

Combined with its added focus on customer service and support, Ford’s next-generation products are set to be their highest quality and most reliable vehicles yet.