There's something a bit interesting in this Q&A that one of our sister magazines had with the head of auto supplier Faurecia.
Most of the discussion between Klaus-Dieter Floerecke of Automobilwoche and Patrick Koller focuses on fuel cells and the hydrogen economy. But then a new topic comes up:
"Q: Ford wants to bring the door production for the Fiesta model back into the company. This could eliminate 400 jobs at your Cologne plant. What's the next step in Cologne?"
"Koller: Together with Ford, we want to see what partial integration of door production might look like. We have also agreed with our customer that we will take our time to find a solution. Ford will not make a final decision on how to proceed with door production until January 2021."
It's been a long time since Ford made interior parts in-house, since before it sold off its parts operations, first by spinning off Visteon Corp. nearly 20 years ago, then through the individual sales of plants that were part of Automotive Components Holdings. Faurecia actually operates one of those former Ford interior parts plants, a 1.6 million-square-foot site in Saline, Mich.
A few automakers, such as Toyota and Honda, do some in-house interior parts, but those are the exception. So the idea of Ford doing even partial integration sounds intriguing, and something I'll be keeping an eye on.