On September 7th and 8th in Almussafes, Spain, the European Quality Summit was held at the Ford factory’s paint plant and was convened by the Vice President of Ford Europe, Ken McFarlane. The summit was attended by all managers of European paint plants (Cologne, Genk, Saarlouis, Turkey and St. Petersburg) in conjunction with senior staff in Europe.
The summit served to show the most relevant and successful introductions to the plants while also sharing experiences and knowledge between the different plants. It should be noted that the the Almussafes plant presented, as an example of a successful case, the Defect Detection System developed by the IDF, which was received with great enthusiasm.
Invited to the presentation was Josep Tornero, the Director of IDF and Head of the Research Team that developed the system, who participated jointly with the Manager Mr. Jose Asensio Paintings in the demonstration and explanation of it.
The manager, Mr. Juan Jose Monlleó, made a note of the convenience of having had all of the European plants support this experience at an early stage, unique in its field, and prior to its introduction at other plants in Europe.
Additionally, other than with Europe, the IDF is in contact with the Ford plant in Cuautitlan in Mexico, which will be visited by D. Josep Tornero in early October 2009, for the purpose of implementation of the same detection system that is in the Almussafes factory.
In addition to all of the European manages, also in attendance of the summit was Todd Wheeler, Chief Operating Officer for the Americas based in Michigan and with expertise in “Supervisor, Global Strategy & Planning Paint Quality Engineering”. Mr. Wheeler showed interest in demonstrating the adequacy of system installation in FORD Cuautitlan plant since it is under construction and will produce the same vehicles as the Almussafes factory does.