Presented by the Technical University of Berlin in association with the Financial Times Deutschland, the award honours the Ford Cologne manufacturing team for launching the new Fiesta at the plant without stopping the production of the other model produced at the plant, the Ford Fusion.

"The Manufacturing Excellence Award for our Ford Cologne Plant is further confirmation of what other external surveys have already shown. It is one of the most efficient, innovative and flexible production plants in the European industry", said John Fleming, Chairman and CEO, Ford of Europe.

The award to Ford was one of five presented at a ceremony in Berlin, each recognising what the judges described as "outstanding manufacturing solutions" across eight industry sectors.

"We are very proud to have received this prestigious award. It is a recognition for the team and their hard work in making the new Fiesta launch such a success," said Karl Anton, the Cologne plant manager.

"Key to this success was engaging with our colleagues who actually build the cars on the assembly line. Their experience proved invaluable as we developed our plans for the manufacturing launch of the new Fiesta," he added.

Volume production of the seventh generation of the Ford Fiesta started at the plant in mid-August.

For the seamless introduction of the all-new Fiesta model, more than 100 Fiesta product development engineers worked alongside manufacturing employees on the assembly line.

In total, 4,000 Cologne assembly plant employees attended 50,000 hours of training over a six week period. Some of the training was done off-line on static cars, while some training took place on the moving production line. In one example of the training undertaken during the six weeks, the production team built the same car on the line every day, then stripped it down and built it again.

The Cologne plant is the first Ford assembly facility in the world to build the new generation Fiesta. In January 2009, the Valencia plant in Spain will also begin building the car. The production facilities for new Fiesta outside of Europe will be Nanjing in China, Rayong in Thailand and Cuautitlàn in Mexico. They will begin producing the car for their respective regions from late 2008 through early 2010.

Since the very first Fiesta was launched in 1976, over 12 million have been sold around the world.

Australian Availability