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With a total of 65 campaigns and over 8.6 million recalled vehicles last year, Ford had more recalls in the United States than any other automaker, according to a recent report by the NHTSA. However, the Blue Oval company knows quality is more important than ever in the automotive industry these days and it is taking steps toward improving its build quality. That is especially true for the 2023 Super Duty, which undergoes a thorough quality review in the early production phase.
The Detroit Free Press recently met with engineers and quality inspectors from the 2023 Super Duty team, who told the publication the level of quality review is unprecedented. The company is currently looking at every inch of the truck and all engineers are invited to look at it with a fine tooth comb – from the front to the rear, from the exterior to the cabin, and from the engine to every harness and brake tube. A procedure that takes around three hours per vehicle.
“Today’s market is critical. You’ve got to get it right. When I go to bed, I lay in bed and think, ‘How can I fix this? How is this not right? What do we need to do?’ And the solution will come to me when I’m laying there. It consumes you because we’re incorporating this new launch process, this initiative for quality,” Paul Murray, a senior powertrain engineer specialized in transmissions, told the publication.
The Super Duty family of trucks is Ford’s most profitable vehicle range and the quality push at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville or Ohio Assembly in Sheffield began in 2020 with initial powertrain inspections. That strategy has now expanded to every component of the machine in an attempt to deliver “the best quality vehicle” to the market. Every step in the process and every small issue found are entered into a global system so that future problems are identified and addressed more quickly.
The new Super Duty has been on sale since late October and Ford is enjoying unprecedented demand from customers. In just five weeks, the automaker received more than 150,000 orders. And as we all know, trucks are where most of the automaker’s money comes from, so it’s surely a good thing to know those machines are thoroughly inspected before leaving the plant.
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