The 100,000-square-meter Ford motor assembly plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, has 1,200 employees working in three shifts. Every day, the plant produces approximately 1,100 engines for Ford's Fiesta, Courier, Focus, Ka and Eco Sport models. The production process spans everything from forging and milling the cylinder heads and the engine blocks to final assembly of the complete engine.
One of the critical points in the assembly process comes when the head is joined to the block. The various engine models are built using 23 different combinations of head and piston types. Ford uses a DVT Machine Vision system (Duluth, GA)-installed this past January-to ensure that every engine proceeding down the line has had the correct head and pistons installed.