Ford’s purchasing organisation and strategy

Will Ford break the ‘old boy’s network’ as it looks to reduce its supply base?

The car maker’s supply base is formed by about 1,500 production suppliers – meaning those companies whose parts are physically installed in the vehicle – and roughly 7,000 non-production supplier companies. Ford’s purchasing is headed by Tony Brown, who oversees a purchasing budget of about $90bn (as of 2006), though clearly the budget has now shrunk due to the fall in production over the last three years. The purchasing function is performed by a network of 23 purchasing offices, four in the Americas, eight in Europe and eleven in the Asian Pacific region.