About Ford 

Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 and it is the world’s second largest manufacturer of cars and trucks. It operates in 40 countries, in which it has a total of 114 plants. Ford has 247,500 employees, revenues of over 163 billion dollars and sells 7,220,000 vehicles a year.
FORD ESPAÑA, S.A. commenced its manufacturing operations at its plant in Valencia (Spain) in 1976. After a number of enlargements, the actual total production capacity has exceeded 1,900 vehicles and 4,200 engines a day. 81% of the vehicles and 69% of the motors are exported all over the world. The Valencia plant is Ford’s largest and most flexible plant in the world, and it is able to manufacture four different car models on the same assembly line. 

Background of the Project 

V-CHAIN (Virtual Enterprise for Supply Chain Management) is an initiative that is financed with public and private funds and it benefits from a 50% subsidy from the European Commission thanks to its innovative approach and aspects. The project was devised at Ford’s Material Planning and Logistics (MP&L) Department with the object of solving the increasingly complex problem of global and integrated supply chain management. It specifically focuses on the planning and production sequencing processes, mainly due to the high degree of flexibility at Ford’s plant in Almussafes (it currently manufactures four different models and there are plans to produce seven). Since the scope of the project goes beyond Ford as a company, reaching its entire supply chain, three suppliers (Jonson Controls, Dynamit Nobel, and FSegura Group) have been involved in the initiative, along with the logistics operator (Exel). 

Objective of the Project 

The main purpose of the project is to improve Ford’s supply chain management by means of a virtual enterprise approach with an increase of the communication, coordination and collaboration between the companies involved in the supply chain, which will lead to the development of more integrated and global solutions. Thus the value and service provided to the end customer can be enhanced, particularly reducing the time needed to deliver vehicles and meeting deadlines, thereby contributing to increase the competitiveness, innovation and adaptability of the companies that are part of the supply chain, enabling them to improve their market position. To achieve this objective, new business processes have been developed between the companies, along with new planning and production sequencing algorithms. An infrastructure based on Vitria BusinessWare has been implemented to enable communication and collaboration between the different companies in the supply chain. 

The V-CHAIN Project 

The project began in February 2001 and lasted for 30 months until August 2003. The project had four major performance lines: 

• Analysis and redesign of the business processes relating to the planning and sequencing of production, taking into account more collaborative models between the different companies making up the supply chain. 
• Redesign of the mathematical algorithms controlling the planning and sequencing processes. 
• Implementation of an intra-business and interbusiness integration infrastructure based on Vitria BusinessWare to enable communication and collaboration between all of the companies involved in the project. 
• Development of new vertical business applications based on this infrastructure.   

An EAI and B2Bi business tool like Vitria Business Ware was used to integrate the various applications and systems at Ford. All of the components provided by this tool were used, as well as connectors to integrate with the different systems, workflows to automate business processes, monitoring tools, etc. As far as the applications that were developed is concerned, they are all applications with a web interface, so that they may be accessed by all authorised persons, regardless of whether they belong to Ford or to any other companies. We can point out the following applications as examples: Obsolete Items Management; ASN (Advanced Shipping Note) Management; comparison and evolution of demand in the medium to long term; next sequence generation taking into account the restrictions affecting the players in the supply chain; exception management, etc. 

Contribution to Customers 

The V-CHAIN Project has become a very important tool for Ford, for its suppliers and for the logistical operator. It is the basis for the overall management of the supply chain, it facilitates stock analysis and management, the management and control of the exceptions and variations in the production chain, the reduction of the overtime and urgent dispatches required, a better management and control of obsolete items, the improvement of the stability and regularity of demand and production, etc. 

Customer Remarks 

“V-CHAIN is a pioneering project both in Europe and in the rest of the world. It will provide more reliable real-time information on all of the internal and external operations, thereby improving the response to unexpected changes or events.”

“V-CHAIN allows Ford to communicate with its supply chain in real time, so that it can plan and sequence its production in collaboration with the rest of the members of the chain. That way it can act quickly if there are incidents, improve the decision-making processes, reduce the customer delivery time, and achieve a better control of the associated costs.”