Ford Goes Through Its Platforms With An Axe, Keeps Just Five For Entire Range

In a bid to slash costs, Ford will reduce its number of global architectures to just five, building its entire worldwide fleet off these modular platforms.

The Blue Oval intends on slashing $25.5 billion in costs over the next five years and the elimination of unnecessary platforms will go a long way to achieve this. Once upon a time, Ford had 30 global architectures, but under former chief executive Alan Mulally, that figure was reduced to the nine currently in use.

During a presentation at the 2018 J.P. Morgan Auto Conference, Ford’s head of product development and purchasing, Hau Thai-Tang, said that the cost-cutting measures extend upon Mulally’s One Ford plan which helped save the company from bankruptcy.

“This is not saying One Ford was wrong. This is building on the strategy of One Ford and evolving from it.”

According to Thai-Tang, moving to just five global platforms will boost the efficiency of Ford’s supply base, revealing that up to 70 per cent of a vehicle’s value can be managed through a modular approach, Automotive News reports.

Ford’s five platforms moving forward will be the following: a rear-wheel drive/all-wheel drive body-on-frame platform, a front-wheel drive/AWD unibody, a commercial van unibody, a RWD/AWD unibody, and a unibody platform for all of Ford’s battery-electric vehicles.

The automaker will also look to save roughly $7 billion in engineering and product-development costs. It will also reduce the amount of time it takes to bring a vehicle from paper to the showroom by a considerable 20 per cent.