Ford using AI, 3D printing at Cleveland engine plant for Expedition
Story Highlights Cleveland Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park is providing the EcoBoost V6 engines for Ford's 2025 Ford Expedition.
The plant has the capacity to produce 440,000 EcoBoost V6 and 343,000 EcoBoost I4 engines annually.
Cleveland Engine Plant 1 is Ford's last remaining facility in Cleveland.
Ford Motor Co. is using artificial intelligence and other advanced manufacturing technologies at its Cleveland engine plant to support the relaunch of its flagship sport utility vehicle.
While the Michigan-based automaker is celebrating the 2025 Ford Expedition at its Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville this week, the company also is calling attention to its Cleveland Engine Plant 1, located in Brook Park, which is providing the EcoBoost V6 engines for the Kentucky-built vehicles.
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Ford (NYSE: F) has about 1.6 million square feet of production space at the engine plant's 365-acre site in Brook Park, Gordon Stepchuk, assistant plant manager, told the Cleveland Business Journal during a recent tour. About 95% of that space is being used around the clock, Stepchuk said.
The Cleveland engine plant has the capacity to make about 440,000 EcoBoost V6 engines and 343,000 EcoBoost I4 engines each year and employs roughly 2,000 hourly and salaried workers, he said.
The V6 engines go into the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, the Ford F-150 and Raptor pickup trucks, and the Ford Transit Van, Stepchuk said. The I4 engines go into the Ford Ranger truck and the Ford Bronco and Explorer SUVs, Stepchuk said.
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From left, Phil Bigos, Lean Six Sigma master black belt; Phil Brooks, team leader; and Eric Blankmeier, area manager, show off a completed EcoBoost V6 engine at Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park, Ohio.
Mary Vanac | Cleveland Business Journal
The plant uses a combination of manual workstations and robots to produce its engines. Computer-controlled robots do some of the work of installing parts and conveying the engines to 13 work stations.
"We do a lot of in-process testing to make sure that our quality is top-notch," said Eric Blankmeier, an area manager at the plant. "So nearly each team will have a series of ... test processes or in-series processes to test quality."
Cleveland Engine Plant 1 is using advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, at its on-site innovation center to produce prototypes, tools and parts no longer sold commercially to solve problems on the manufacturing floor.
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A robot conveys an engine assembly along tracks in Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park, Ohio.
Mary Vanac | Cleveland Business Journal
The plant also is piloting a mobile AI vision (MAIV) system that inspects the valves and seats in the V6 engines shipped to Kentucky for the redesigned Expedition and sends the results to a mobile phone app.
"This is our first application [of a MAIV system] here at the Cleveland Engine plant," said Chris Newell, a manufacturing engineer. "One of the really cool things about it with innovation and the new technology, it gives us immediate feedback of a pass-fail system."
The MAIV system also provides a "massive cost save," Newell said.
"For some of the other camera applications that we put in, they would cost maybe four or five times the amount just for one application," he said. "So we're able to improve our quality in more areas at less cost."
The development path of Ford's 3D-printed tools
Bobby Stacey, Team 12 leader at the plant, noticed that his teammates were having trouble seating small plastic fasteners called fir trees in the EcoBoost V6 engines they were building. Stacey asked Tom Williams, who mans the Cleveland Engine Plant Innovation Lab, for help.
"They couldn't seat it in ergonomically," said Phil Bigos, Lean Six Sigma master black belt (meaning he's an expert in process improvement). "They were complaining about pain in their fingers during installation."
So Williams and his colleague, Bryan Trego, created a 3D-printed plastic tool in their innovation lab to help the line workers install the fir trees properly without hurting their fingers.
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Close-up of a 3D-printed tool designed and manufactured in Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant Innovation Center.
Mary Vanac | Cleveland Business Journal
Creating 3D tools and parts at the plant's innovation center rather than sending them out for manufacture saves time and money, Bigos said.
"It's a lot of collaboration with employees on the floor, and we can turn ideas around in hours," he said. "It's great having them in-house to be able to turn it around really quick, really driving innovation."
On the manufacturing floor, Stacey uses the tool to install a fir tree near the end of the engine plant's manufacturing line.
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Bobby Stacey, team leader, uses a 3D-printed tool to press a small plastic fastener called a fir tree into a V6 EcoBoost engine at Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park, Ohio.
Mary Vanac | Cleveland Business Journal
Cleveland Engine Plant 1 is the last Ford facility standing in the Cleveland area
Opened in 1952, Ford's No. 1 engine plant was one of two in Brook Park, along with an iron casting plant in Brook Park and stamping plants in Brook Park and nearby Walton Hills. An aluminum casting plant was added to the Brook Park site in 2000 but shut down in 2002, according to Cleveland.com.
In 1978, engine plants No. 1 and No. 2 made engines for more than half of Ford's domestic cars, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. However, a recession in the auto industry reduced employment at the engine complex from 16,000 in 1978 to 11,000 in 1980, the encyclopedia states.
Cleveland Engine 2 was closed in 2012 and later sold to developers. In 2021, Weston Inc., the DiGeronimo Cos. and Scannell Properties broke ground for the Forward Innovation West Center on the site of Ford's former engine and casting plant, but that land now is the proposed site of a roofed stadium for the Cleveland Browns.
Ford's stampling plants and casting plants in Brook Park and Walton Hills also have been closed and razed.
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