Ford Motor Co.'s (Detroit) 2.8-million-square-foot Chicago Assembly Plant is the first car plant in North America that uses the company's flexible manufacturing system. The system enables the plant to produce up to eight different models based on two architectures, thanks to technologies such as a flexible body shop where one set of tooling builds multiple vehicle configurations.
To ensure parts and subassemblies arrive at their workstations quickly and efficiently, Ford is using a number of automated material handling machines from SailRail Automated Systems Inc. (Markham, ON). These include over-under machines for handling components like body side apertures, rear floorpans, front structures, front subframes and roofs; and a larger side-by-side machine for handling rear suspensions. Many of the parts are robotically picked, calling for precise coordination between the material handling equipment and the actual workstation.