At this point no way to predict when you'll get scheduled for production

[Lone Star Proud]

there is no way to guess when your truck might get scheduled for production. To the untrained eye, it looks like Ford jumps all over the place when they pick an order to be schedule. If they went in a more linear direction, you could see all the June order completed followed by July and then to me in late August at some point.

I know it's more complicated than that, but it leaves a system where no one can predict when you will finally get selected. I sure as hell don't know, the dealers are clueless and I doubt Ford can even really tell you themselves.

My best guess is they have a team of drunk monkeys throwing darts at a giant wall covered with orders.

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[MarkG]

Darts are better than what drunk monkeys usually throw.

 

[MakinDoForNow]

Darts are better than what drunk monkeys usually throw.

I think he hit the wrong D key when he meant to hit the key to the right of it ("F")

 

[notfast]

To the untrained eye, it looks like Ford jumps all over the place when they pick an order to be schedule.

My educated guess is that they have some crazy algorithms that determine which orders to schedule based largely on the availability of parts, materials, and supplies to put the darn things together with, along with other factors such as order date, priority code, dealership allocation, and the list goes on.

If they went in a more linear direction, you could see all the June order completed followed by July and then to me in late August at some point.

It could be a thousand factors. Say the paint plant is not going to get a sufficient supply of Velocity Blue. Should Ford stop all production to maintain a First-In-First-Out system? Should Ford schedule as many Velocity Blue orders as paint supplies can hold and schedule orders submitted later for other colors sooner so that the final assembly plant down the line can try to keep running?

 

[JBnorthTX]

Based on the last 2 weeks of scheduling emails reported here, the hybrids seem to now be following a somewhat linear pattern. Most of the orders scheduled were June and July, and the ones from August were all 8/10 or earlier. What's difficult to know, though, is how many more orders made in those time frames will be scheduled before we see mid/late August and beyond.

Ecoboost orders were much less consistent. Over those same 2 weeks there were orders scheduled ranging from June to December. It makes sense to see more recent Ecoboost orders getting scheduled compared to hybrids (there were a lot from October) because of no EPA delay or production constraints, but it's surprising to see June/July Ecoboost orders not yet scheduled or just now getting scheduled.

 

[JennyJoannSuebeeMcNash]

Cripes. I ordered 4 days before you. MAY? Ugh.

 

[M.A.C.]

Honestly, I have been following the scheduling for months, have been talking to dealers, have been following Tim Bartz, and have had many phone calls with Ford. There is no coherent system in place because of human intervention and lack thereof. At the very least it's the perception that there is no real process and in the end, it is this perception that really matters.

So Ford has put together a Maverick customer service department to try to address this, but the problem is that they cannot answer any real questions and the main reason is that Ford themselves locks out production information from this department.

The only thing they can tell you is that yes your order is in and confirmed, they cannot confirm your priority number, they can't tell you what constraints are holding back your build from being scheduled for production, they can't tell you why a FE is going to be one of the last truck built by Ford and why.....It goes on and on so I won't bore you further....and I won't rehash the process that we believe we know about because in reality, we don't know the selection process and we probably never will.

I do believe that Ford has never been so closely scrutinized with the production of any truck with the exception of the Bronco debacle and they just are not set up to give out the amount of information that would satisfy us.

 

[jhud042002]

My July 7 order has a July 7 build date HA!

 

[jhud042002]

Based on the last 2 weeks of scheduling emails reported here, the hybrids seem to now be following a somewhat linear pattern. Most of the orders scheduled were June and July, and the ones from August were all 8/10 or earlier. What's difficult to know, though, is how many more orders made in those time frames will be scheduled before we see mid/late August and beyond.

Ecoboost orders were much less consistent. Over those same 2 weeks there were orders scheduled ranging from June to December. It makes sense to see more recent Ecoboost orders getting scheduled compared to hybrids (there were a lot from October) because of no EPA delay or production constraints, but it's surprising to see June/July Ecoboost orders not yet scheduled or just now getting scheduled.

My thought is Ford is clearing out the ALL the backlog of Hybrid orders (June-Nov) from larger dealers (Chapman, Long MacArthur, Granger, etc), then will start clearing out orders from smaller, rural dealers. So if you ordered from a really small mom and pop Ford dealer, unless your lucky, be prepared to wait until this summer/early Fall to get your truck.

 

[Bret Maverick]

Darts are better than what drunk monkeys usually throw.

That's a crappy thing to say, true though.

 

[Rojo]

My educated guess is that they have some crazy algorithms that determine which orders to schedule based largely on the availability of parts, materials, and supplies to put the darn things together with, along with other factors such as order date, priority code, dealership allocation, and the list goes on.



It could be a thousand factors. Say the paint plant is not going to get a sufficient supply of Velocity Blue. Should Ford stop all production to maintain a First-In-First-Out system? Should Ford schedule as many Velocity Blue orders as paint supplies can hold and schedule orders submitted later for other colors sooner so that the final assembly plant down the line can try to keep running?

Exactly where I'm at on this, it is all being scheduled by an algorithm taking into account all the listed factors. To a person seeing a June date would take priority over a December date if all that was needed was a bed extender or floor mats but a computer wouldn't be able to make that distinction.

Also we don't know know how their data structure is setup, it could, after all requirements are green and you are left with a list of five identical trucks that it does use a FIFO algorithm in a case such as that. It would be a terrible way to design the algorithm but it would be more efficient from a hardware standpoint, fewer clock cycles trying to determine lowest to highest.

I said in another post that I tried to figure out the algorithm and I couldn't, I just don't have enough data or time to sit down and figure it out. My best guess is what you stated above, and I suspect paint color. I saw a high number of cactus grey, area 51, and carbonized grey all get scheduled last week with a handful of other colors. Those three would probably use the same primer color but then that was debunked this week as the colors where all over the place. I haven't seen a lot of shadow black or oxford white get scheduled the last several weeks but that could just be that those colors didn't get as many orders.

 

[Delbert]

Got my build date for an XL hybrid 2/7/22 on an order from June through a small local dealer.

 

[jhud042002]

Exactly where I'm at on this, it is all being scheduled by an algorithm taking into account all the listed factors. To a person seeing a June date would take priority over a December date if all that was needed was a bed extender or floor mats but a computer wouldn't be able to make that distinction.

Also we don't know know how their data structure is setup, it could, after all requirements are green and you are left with a list of five identical trucks that it does use a FIFO algorithm in a case such as that. It would be a terrible way to design the algorithm but it would be more efficient from a hardware standpoint, fewer clock cycles trying to determine lowest to highest.

I said in another post that I tried to figure out the algorithm and I couldn't, I just don't have enough data or time to sit down and figure it out. My best guess is what you stated above, and I suspect paint color. I saw a high number of cactus grey, area 51, and carbonized grey all get scheduled last week with a handful of other colors. Those three would probably use the same primer color but then that was debunked this week as the colors where all over the place. I haven't seen a lot of shadow black or oxford white get scheduled the last several weeks but that could just be that those colors didn't get as many orders.

My theory is they are saving all the oxford white orders, doesn't matter order date, for when they start pumping out fleet orders....which will probably be over the summer haha.

 

[notfast]

I do believe that Ford has never been so closely scrutinized with the production of any truck with the exception of the Bronco debacle and they just are not set up to give out the amount of information that would satisfy us.

I agree. Supply constraints and disruptions were always a thing since Just In Time manufacturing became commonplace. But except for the odd news article, most people couldn't give two darns since cars are (or at least were) usually bought off the lot.

I remember when an automaker had a disruption with one of their seat subcontractors. Rather than stop production, they shipped thousands of vehicles to dealerships without the seats installed.

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