Lack of chips forces Ford to stop production

Delivery bottlenecks are causing problems for the US car manufacturer Ford: Due to a lack of semiconductor chips, the Ford works in Cologne will have to almost completely stop car production in the next few months. This means less work for the local employees. A company spokesman reported that the group had agreed short-time work in production with the employee representatives for the period from May 3 to June 18 and from June 30 to July 9. During this time the tapes would stand still. Around 5000 of the 15,000 employees in Cologne are affected. The assembly lines in Cologne are only supposed to run on the days from June 19 to 29. The second production shutdown until mid-July is followed by the factory holidays. Production will start again on August 16, they said. Ford is not alone with the delivery problems with chips. Manufacturers such as Audi and Daimler have therefore announced production restrictions. As a result, BMW recently had to stop production in Regensburg and Oxford, England. "We will make up for the lost production in the best possible way," said a Ford spokesman. "We are working on improving the situation as quickly as possible." Ford had previously announced that production in Cologne would be suspended on Fridays due to the corona-related decline in demand. As recently became known, the production lines in the Saarlouis plant will also be idle from May 3rd to 18th and from May 25th to June 7th. 4,500 employees are affected there. Further short-time working days in Saarlouis are being negotiated, according to Ford.