Name: Ford CEO Jim Hackett on the company's pivot to combat coronavirus
Uploaded: 2020-04-08
Duration: 8 min 37 s
Description: The automaker is manufacturing ventilators and PPE gear.

The automaker is manufacturing ventilators and PPE gear.

Ford CEO Jim Hackett on the company's pivot to combat coronavirus

Leadership

Watch: Ford is pivoting production to combat coronavirus

Jim, thank you so much for joining us to talk about Corona virus and how Ford is responding to it. You've announced that board will be making ventilators and face Max for health care workers. 50,000 ventilator in 100 days. When will the first batch be ready to be shipped? Well, Susie, thank you for the discussion today, and this is a really important initiative at Fort Effect. It's hard to imagine that was only 17 days ago that we actually started the work to produce those ventilators. So there's a ramp up program. There's 1500 of these that come quite quickly here in April, and then we start to hit a run rank where we're producing 50,000 in May, and we want to go on to produce 100,000 in total. When we think at that time the pandemic will will fully be flamed out so you'll keep on going after you hit that 50,000 mark. We will, because it's our belief that the stockpile needs to be restored after this. And as the president said, there's other parts of the world that are underserved we think will be a demand there. You have completely pivoted from making cars and trucks to making ventilators face shield, respirator mask. And I understand that plenty of Ford employees are United auto workers. We were hunkered down at home, volunteered to come into work and to manufacture these healthcare needs tell us a little bit about that whole process. Well, it's just an extraordinary story of, you know, people wanting to be in service of others. We look at our first line responders every night. We all see with a heavy heart to see what the demands are on them. In our first instinct was to find out what they needed most, and we actually were told the ventilators were really important. But to build the face mask, you could help save the lives of the first responders. So that started the initiative while we were in parallel studying the ventilator problem. And it's just an extraordinary story of people taking care of others, and it's now spread throughout the company, and I should mention General Electric is partnering with us and have been quite quite helpful as well. We're getting to the point Jim, where many companies are starting to talk about getting ready and getting prepared to be open their businesses, whether it's in weeks or months. When do you plan to real factories, dealerships in offices, in on bond of talking about this right now? Because all the effort that Ford went through with how to turn off and that's something you really don't plan for. For example, before this all happened, we had about 1000 people working at home. Today we have 100 and 25,000 people working at home. And so we've already begun the planning for turning on, as we say, the problems a bigger challenge because the consciousness of everyone has been raised that they know there's a virus. When we were turning it off, there was kind of some people were aware of it. Others weren't. Now it's, you know, uniformly of concerns who were planning to make the environment the most safe and accommodating that they can be, given that we're gonna be living with some version of this until a vaccine is out. We learned, for example, in Ford that selling vehicles through our dealers online was a big advantage in the restoration of business in China. So we started to multiply that effect here in the United States, and it's actually working. People like the ability to buy online and then maybe have a delivery system, uh, bring them the vehicle and they don't even have to touch their feet on a parking lot. That's interesting what other kinds of changes could be coming toe for, especially in the beginning. Ah, weeks and months when you open up, Could there be projects that have postponed off some plants that stay closed? A possible job reductions? What's ahead? Well, our mindset going into this was that we were gonna look at a V shaped kind of curve. Now that is up for intellectual debate. So I purposely tried to protect as many jobs as we could. We didn't want to put him on the social payrolls. We at the top of the company. We've all taken pay reductions, but the idea is to get everyone back to work. And as soon as we can consider this safe target, I suspect that you'll have a step approach to everyone getting back to work. Let me give you a quick example. One of our factories have 7000 people in it, so they can all show up at the door of one day and be productive, so we have to turn it on in waves, so to speak. In addition, in addition to the consciousness of the safety and then the stepping up, we need the economy to respond, you know, from a demand perspective. So we're talking toe various people in government that work on this and say, If you can create some sort of incentives a t end of this that would be helpful to the whole industry. Well, there are so many predictions now that we're really heading into a top procession. And even before Corona virus, Ford had given a a weak forecast for 2020. So what can you do, proactively to revel business? Well, as we were looking at last year's performance, we had ah launch of a product very, you know, substantial product for us, explore, by the way, it had its best February in the last 15 years, right before things started to turn off. So we're in a state where we're launching. 90% of the portfolio that will be in North American showrooms will be brand new by the end of next year's. We have three major launches this year that we want to continue one you know about. Which is the Mustang Maki. There's hints about a new Bronco that's coming and some things around our F 1 50 the flagship vehicle force. So from force perspective, all the momentum behind those new products couldn't come at a better time. Yeah, I've heard about some of the exciting new launches that are coming up, and it sounds great. But, you know, given that millions of people don't have jobs and might not have jobs for a while, when do you realistically expect that consumers will be comfortable about buying a new car truck? Well, again, We have history here, you know, in 06 No. Eight. There's an experience that everyone went through as jobs were reduced. The difference now is that the banking system is very liquid. It's in great shape. The Treasury actions have come early in this problem, so I think the people that are forecasting that that there's gonna be a much more difficult recession is because the unemployment high. But that can rectify itself quite quick with Ian that many of these air getting workers then, as people start to go back out, demand will pick up. And I'm a believer. I'm on optimist. That says maybe we're gonna have a tough, definitely a tough second quarter and a ramping up in third. And then we should have a pretty strong fourth quarter. You know, Jim, of these are difficult times and, you know, to lead a huge company like Ford, you're responsible for the safety of nearly 200,000 employees all around the world. And this has been it's cold in 19. Is unusual crisis to go through? How has this changed the way that you're leading the company? And is there any new leadership lesson you've learned through this whole experience? Well, because this is my third time managing through a crisis, I can tell you what I learned from the pandemic is that CEOs need to be able to play chess in the future. What this means is the president is so demanding. There's so many questions, there's worry, but you have to you have to deal with that. But you have to be asking yourself, What are we actually gonna be doing weeks from now? Based on the impact of that, you actually have to start planning that and building strategies around that. And so I can confirm to you that this pandemic talk to me this time is that I never imagined the chest to be the whole world at the same time. And that's the new thing now is we're managing. The whole board is simultaneously.