Now Henry Ford’s great-grandson is initiating his own industrial revolution. But the one waged by William Clay Ford Jr., the company’s current chairman, is not built on smokestacks and grit. The self-proclaimed “environmental industrialist”–who likes to fly-fish and admits Ford’s sport utility vehicles need to clean up their act–intends a flower-power overhaul at the Rouge. In his biggest move since taking the wheel of the family firm two years ago, Ford, 43, persuaded his board last month to spend $2 billion to tear down the old assembly plant and transform the Rouge into a garden of industry, where hummingbirds will commingle with factory workers.
In a few years a wildflower meadow will grow in the place where a factory once spit out millions of Fords. And by 2003 a new environmentally friendly assembly plant will rise nearby, complete with a “living roof” blanketed with sedum, a succulent ground cover that flowers in the spring. Ivy will creep up the exterior walls of the plant, while inside, workers will be awash in light streaming through expansive skylights. The plant will be a model of flexibility, capable of building nine varieties of cars and trucks simultaneously on one assembly line. Some of the plant’s computers will be powered by fuel cells, a clean source of electricity, while the paint shop throws off one third less air pollution. Much of the backbreaking work in today’s dark, four-level plant will be replaced by computerized workstations in an airy, one-story layout, with mezzanines and overhead walkways to improve safety by reducing pedestrian traffic on the factory floor. And when the lunch whistle blows, workers can dine on a rooftop patio among songbirds and other wildlife Ford expects to return to the now barren site. Ford’s grand vision, which he says could take two decades to be fully realized, is for the postindustrial Rouge to become the world’s new green model for manufacturing. “I would like the Rouge again to be the most copied and studied industrial complex in the world,” he told NEWSWEEK. “My great-grandfather would have thought this was fantastic.”
But not everyone is wild about Ford’s flowers. Just as many doubted Henry Ford could build a car for the “great multitudes,” the pragmatists of the 21st century find Bill Ford’s fanciful notions farfetched. Sure, it’s nice to grow a pretty roof, says the Sierra Club’s Dan Becker, but that doesn’t square with what Ford intends to roll down the assembly line. The new Rouge will start out producing pickup trucks, which belch more pollution and guzzle more gasoline than regular passenger cars. “Greening up a Ford plant to produce a pickup truck is like producing an environmentally friendly factory to make cigarettes,” says Becker, who nonetheless praised Ford’s promise in July to improve the gas mileage of its SUVs by 25 percent. Tougher criticism may come from Wall Street, which sometimes worries that Ford’s leanings will lead his company down the garden path. Told of Ford’s plan to erect an assembly plant with a living roof, Morgan Stanley auto analyst Steve Girsky paused and said: “That sounds different. What’s the return on investment?”
Ford officials acknowledge their scheme for the Rouge is 10 percent more costly than erecting a traditional steel-slab structure. But the payoff comes down the road, Ford argues, in the form of more motivated, productive workers and an industrial site that requires no expensive environmental cleanups. Indeed, the living roof will suck up two inches of rainwater and let it evaporate naturally, rather than allowing it to spill onto oily parking lots and stream those toxins into the river. (Even the parking lots will be made of an ecofriendly porous pavement that absorbs water and channels it into grassy ditches among patches of mulberry bushes.) “If [Wall Street] just sees the green roof going on and the botanical gardens going in, they’ll think we’ve lost our collective minds,” says Ford. “But this isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s about humanizing the place for people who work there.” And by employing “lean manufacturing” techniques at the plant, where no movement of parts or people is wasted, inventory costs will be slashed and productivity will improve, Ford says. Even the foliage on the walls and roof will cut the utility bill by acting as a blanket to keep the factory cool in summer and warm in winter.
The Rouge was the first auto factory Bill Ford ever visited. At 8 years old he asked his father to show him how cars were made, and William Clay Ford Sr. took him to the mighty Rouge. “I was awestruck that what started off as a bunch of parts ended up as a car,” recalls Ford. Now Bill Ford faces an even more daunting task. He has to prove that he can make a factory roof green and Ford’s bottom line black.
