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Ford Kentucky Truck to Open Metal Stamping Plant

13 May 1998

Ford Kentucky Truck to Open Metal Stamping Plant; Production Begins in 1999, Adding More Than 60 Jobs

    LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 12 -- The Ford Kentucky Truck Plant will
soon produce many of its own body stampings and supply other Ford assembly
plants with parts.
    A 7.4 million pound Schuler stamping press -- more than half the length of
a football field and as tall as a two story house -- will be installed in a
new 100,000 square-foot assembly plant addition.
    The building will be complete next month.  Press installation has begun
and production will begin in the spring of 1999.
    "Kentucky Truck Plant employees have proven that they can assemble world-
class vehicles with the highest quality -- and do it efficiently," said Frank
Foley, plant manager.  "We have earned the company's confidence that KTP can
take the next step and make its own body stampings."
    The new stamping plant will be operated by more than 60 hourly and
salaried Ford employees.  First products to be produced include doors and
roofs for the Super Duty F-Series trucks assembled at the plant.  Body sides
for the Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer will be stamped at Kentucky
Truck and then shipped to the nearby Louisville Assembly Plant, where those
vehicles are assembled.  Stampings for other Ford vehicles may be added to
Kentucky Truck Plant's production later.
    "Having a stamping plant closer to our assembly plants will reduce
shipping costs for components, allow us to reduce inventories at the assembly
plants, and allow us to improve quality by responding quicker should issues
develop," said Foley.
    Huge pieces of the Schuler stamping press -- transported from Germany --
will travel up the Ohio River by barge, and then will be shipped by road to
the Kentucky Truck Plant on giant 18-axle trucks.
    Kentucky Truck's Schuler press is a five-station cross-bar transfer press,
which means that a vehicle part such as a roof or door can be stamped by up to
five different dies in quick succession before the component is completed.
The part is moved from stamping die to stamping die with a suction cup
mechanism attached to a crossbar.  Schuler presses of this type are currently
in use at Ford stamping plants in Buffalo and Chicago.
    The only other Ford assembly plants in North America with an integrated
stamping capability on the same site are the Wayne Stamping and Assembly
Operations in Wayne, Michigan, and the Hermosillo Stamping and Assembly Plant
in Hermosillo, Mexico.

SOURCE  Ford Motor Company