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Ford plugs holes after Jag, LR

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The contracts have been signed and following its off-loading of Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata, Ford Motor Company is reorganising its global operations.

This decision has been motivated by the multinational's desire to reduce the amount of time taken to bring a new vehicle to market, reduce costs, improve quality and cut down duplication in engineering and purchasing.

The changes affect mainly its product development and purchasing operations. Ford will designate the development of patricular global products to specific regions.

But certain vehicle systems will continue to be developed regionally, such as the F-Series's chassis engineering in the US and the bakkie development programme in Asia and Africa.

It is also designating a global network of engineering centres to ensure Ford's core attributes are present in all vehicles bearing the Blue Oval.

"We have successfully shared technologies across many of our product lines in the past," said Derrick Kuzak, Ford's group vice president for global product development.

"These changes will allow us to fully leverage Ford's global product development and purchasing organisations to create more customer-focused vehicles faster."

The changes, which came into effect earlier this month and will continue as new vehicle programmes are implement, are not expected to result in retrenchments or large-scale relocations.

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