Ford Cutting its Global Platforms to 8, Will Launch 15 New Products This Year

Platform sharing is a surefire way to reduce costs, as well as complexity, across your entire range and many manufacturers are into it. You can count Ford, too, which will reduce its global car and truck platform to eight.

The company’s vice president of global planning, Raj Nair, had said that it planned to have nine platforms by 2016 – a much lower number than the current 27. Ford President and CEO Mark Fields decided there should be less.

“We’ve made further progress and are committed to getting down to eight”, he said last Tuesday while speaking at the Deutsche Bank Global Industry Conference. “That yields tremendous benefits to improving the rate at which we introduce new vehicles.”

The Detroit News report that Ford has no less than 15 global launches set for this year, one of them being the 2015 Edge crossover. Seven of those new models will come to North America, four to South America, 10 in Europe and 18 in the Asia-Pacific region. If those numbers don’t stack up it’s because some models will be introduced in multiple regions.

“We have a full product pipeline. As we look at this year, we’re guiding higher in profitability”, commented Fields, adding that “in 2015 we’re going to stay consistent with our priorities. It’s a very important year where we expect significant growth, and it’s based on great product.”