The Wall Street Journal's reporting that major FoMoCo supplier Collins & Aikman decided this past weekend to cut off deliveries of certain parts and supplies to a Ford plant in Mexico. In this world of J.I.T. (Just In Time) supply, it caused a wee bit of a problem in the automaker's ability to produce cars at the facility — and by wee bit, we mean that they had to totally shutter production on Friday and Saturday. Now normally these type of F.T.D. (Flowers To Door Failure To Deliver) situations are the kind tiny suppliers will sometimes find themselves, and usually they do it only when they're close to biting the bullet, but as the Journal's Jeffrey McCracken points out:
Automotive suppliers occasionally threaten not to deliver parts, but rarely follow through. The few that do are typically very small suppliers that are close to going under.
But what do you expect, C&A's a company already in Chapter 11 posting a net loss in July of $44 million, up from $25.6 million the previous month. Normally...
...you don't expect a company to continue to be in business much longer when you're posting those kind of numbers. But of course, the FoMoCo production line the supplier shut down was none other than the automaker's sedan savior, the Fusion — and although the line disruption only caused a 400-car reduction in production, at this junction the boys and girls in Dearborn can't afford to have many of those.
Ford Gets Cut Off by a Top Supplier As Detroit Squeezes Parts Makers (sub. req.) [WSJ]
Related:
Breaking! Collins & Aikman Submits Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Reorganization Plan [internal]