OM in the News: Sustainability and the Ford F-150 Truck

“Bucolic upstate New York is an odd place to be building the future of the U.S. auto industry,” writes Forbes (Nov. 24, 2014). Yet here, in a factory that makes aluminum cans for the beverage industry, workers are gearing up for a crucial role in the launch of the next generation of America’s bestselling vehicle.The Novelis plant is the birthplace for Ford’s innovative new F-150 pickup, 700 pounds lighter–and thus more fuel-efficient to meet government requirements–because its steel body panels have been replaced by lightweight aluminum. The stakes could not be higher. The F-150 pickup is Ford’s crown jewel, generating $20 billion in revenue annually and 40% of its annual profits.

Novelis, the world’s largest aluminum recycler, showed Ford how it could afford the switch to higher-priced aluminum (adding about $750 per truck) by using recycled scrap instead of buying virgin aluminum mined from bauxite. Together they created an innovative supply chain that allows Ford to recover a big chunk of its aluminum costs by selling the scrap back to its suppliers and reusing it. The rest of the industry is watching closely. Tough new fuel-economy laws require automakers to double their fleetwide average to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

Here’s how it works: When a vehicle body panel is stamped, about 40% of the metal winds up as scrap. Instead of gathering up all the various metal scraps from its stamping plants, Ford installed pneumatic scrap-handling equipment that will separate the aluminum alloy on conveyors and deposit the scraps in dedicated containers. Novelis contracted a fleet of 150 trailers to ship the scrap back to its plant for reprocessing. The scrap is then melted in a 2,000-degree furnace. Once the molten metal is ready, it is cast into massive 30,000-pound ingots for subsequent processing. It’s then ready to be rolled into sheets 1/16 of an inch thick and shipped in giant coils back to Ford’s stamping plants, where the process begins anew.

Novelis’ goal is to have 70% recycled content in its automotive sheet by 2020, up from 10% five years ago.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is the switch to aluminum a big risk for Ford’s F-150?

2. What are the advantages of this process?