In its push for more efficient auto factories, Ford Motor Co. is zeroing in a new manufacturing cost item: unhealthy Ford workers.

Ford executives believe they can make workforce training budgets go further if the workers it trains end up with longer, healthier careers at Ford.

“Our employees are unhealthier than the average person,” James Tetreault, Ford’s vice president for North American manufacturing, said here today at the 2013 CAR Management Briefing Seminars. “We want to help them have longer and more productive lives.”

He said the company’s research did not attempt to ask why its employee population was worse off than the average, and Tetreault declined to speculate. But in a bid to bring down human resources costs, Ford wants to get workers more involved in preventative healthcare.

It is not a purely altruistic effort, the factory boss makes clear.

“We spend a lot of money on our people,” he said. “That’s a cost we don’t want to recur.”

This summer, the automaker launched a two-year pilot program around Detroit to help bring workers with chronic health issues together with nurses and physicians who can personalize healthcare goals for the employee. Ford expects as many as 1,500 of its workers sign up for the pilot, which requires the recommendation of a personal physician.

“Individuals with poorly managed chronic conditions cost eight to 10 times more than those in good health,” Tetreault told the audience.

“Our hourly worker population has more high-risk members compared with the national benchmark.

“The five most common chronic conditions — asthma, diabetes, congestive heart failure, hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — comprise 60 percent of the total health care cost. And our hourly workers have a higher-than-average rate of occurrence of these chronic conditions,” he added.

“Use of preventive services among our hourly workers is low, compared with the national average.”

Part of the program will encourage workers to have screenings for cholesterol levels and examinations for colon, breast and cervical cancer.