Ford will add 800 more salaried workers this year than the 2,200 white-collar workers the automaker thought it would need to meet growing demand for new vehicles.
Ford continues to grapple with a good problem: how to make enough cars when the industry is on pace to sell more than 15 million new vehicles in the U.S. this year.
“We are maximizing the facilities we have,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas. “We are using every minute of every day but there is more demand than we can supply.”
The Dearborn-based automaker struggled to keep up last year when sales rebounded to 14.5 million, according to Autodata. Ford added 400,000 units of capacity in the second half of 2012 and is adding 200,000 more this year as well as reducing the summer shutdown at many of its plants.