Ford has signed a collaborative manufacturing agreement with GE Fanuc Automation to provide automated scheduling, routing, tracking and supply chain management for Ford plants around the world.

Under the deal, GE Fanuc will implement an e-manufacturing system to give Ford more flexibility in its production schedules. For example, the company will be able to route all jobs for a specific order to the most capable machines or resources in any plant.

The system will provide Ford and its suppliers with real-time views of the production process, allowing just-in-time deliveries of parts, thus cutting costs. It will also collect data dynamically and make this available in real time to upstream and downstream operations.

The system will combine GE Fanuc`s off-the-shelf Cimplicity manufacturing software with application-specific functions. It will interface with up to a dozen different plant and enterprise systems already being used by Ford.