Ford Engine Plant Tour
ROUSH CleanTech and Blue Bird are proud to partner with Ford Motor Company to offer the 6.8L engine in the propane, gasoline and CNG Vision school buses. Last month, Ford opened their doors to their Windsor Engine Plant so we could take a closer look at just how those engines are made.
Members from ROUSH CleanTech, Blue Bird, Yancey Bus Sales and some Georgia-based customers toured Ford’s Windsor Engine Plant. The Ontario, Canada-based plant is a whopping 1.2 million square foot facility, employing more than 2,500 people, and is capable of producing over 1 million engines a year.
With such high volume engine production, quality control is a main priority of the plant’s floor managers. The plant’s quality and production teams walked our group through their strict 10-point review process involving lasers, cameras and scanners that check for defects. If a defect is detected, the flagged engine is instantly sent to the repair bay for immediate inspection and correction.
Every day, their quality teams do two different periodic jobs observations, giving them an opportunity to fine-tune and improve quality and make adjustments to minimize issues. They’re also instrumental in providing feedback for product improvement efforts, something that is happening constantly to improve customer satisfaction.
“It was great showing our customers around the Windsor Engine Plant so they could see first-hand the quality and pride behind every engine manufactured at that facility,” said Shooter Roberts, sales manager at Yancey Bus Sales. “When we all come together — Ford, Blue Bird, ROUSH CleanTech and Blue Bird dealers — we are an unbeatable combination.”
Blue Bird buses equipped with ROUSH CleanTech fuel systems are the only school buses that run on an OEM-produced, high-volume manufactured engine. Last year, Blue Bird’s full year of production of propane Vision buses only accounted for about 2 percent of Ford’s annual build of 6.8L V10 engines.
We are currently producing a video highlighting our partnership with the Windsor Engine Plant. If you have stories, information or ideas on what you’d like to learn about the engine, please reach out to Brian Carney.
