How Henry Ford Would Deal With Today’s Supply Chain Upheaval –

Mr. Ford grasped keenly that supply chains were fragile, necessitating constant scrutiny and backup plans. Despite his hostility toward labor unions, he understood the value of generous wages in motivating workers. And he warned that the demands of investors for short-term gains could threaten longer-term resilience.

“He recognized that the supply chain even then was full of risks,” said Mike Skinner, a founder of the Henry Ford Heritage Association. If he were around today, “Ford would have been making their own chips,” Mr. Skinner added. “There’s no doubt about that.”

The people running Ford say that’s an oversimplification. The F-150 pickup produced at the Rouge uses more than 800 types of chips, requiring dependence on specialists. And chips have limited shelf lives, making them difficult to stockpile.

“It’s a lot of complexity,” Ford’s chief industrial platform officer, Hau Thai-Tang, said during a recent interview. For Ford, making its own chips, or even limiting its suppliers to North America, would pose “a Herculean task that would be very asset- and capital-intensive, and just not realistic,” he added.

Yet Ford’s strategy in sourcing chips, Mr. Thai-Tang acknowledged, has been guided by the interests of a party that the company’s founder disdained as a potential threat to the vitality of his business — the shareholder.