Ford Business Solutions Centers: A joint effort to focus on Cost and Quality

The February visit to the Mexico FBS Center was led by Eric Roell, Center Leader, FBS Mexico. It provided a first-hand look at how the team in Mexico is contributing value for Ford. Amend and Dudley were joined on the visit by key leaders that support the FBS Strategy globally: Laura Castro, FBS COO and Business Office, and Nia Harrison, FBS Process Re-engineering Senior Manager. The executives reinforced the need to give special attention to cost and quality during key discussions with the local leadership that also covered cost optimization opportunities and ways to redesign and even automate the work we do to eliminate waste, redundancy, and manual work. Amend also held a Business Review with the Mexico IT Leadership and, jointly with Gabriela Diaz, Mexico IT director, had an All hands meeting with the IT organization. During his participation, he said “People have to learn endlessly, on a daily basis, apply proactively, and work hard. There shouldn’t be a constraint on the potential to continue growing the best and brightest minds to enable Ford+.”

Inclusive leadership to get allies

Dudley and Amend joined the Women of Ford (WoF) group in Mexico for the forum "Women in STEM Challenges, What Would Leaders Do?" to learn about the unique opportunities and challenges faced by women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. They discussed how we can meet these challenges and how our leaders, allies, and peers can help in this important task. Members of the WoF group showed that in Mexico only 12% of students studying a STEM career are women, and an even smaller percentage manage to obtain their degree. "The world was quite different than it is today, but still, women need encouragement to pursue engineering careers or degrees in scientific fields; I always try to give that opportunity, even if they didn't ask for it," Dudley said to a WoF member. Noting the work still left to do, she reinforced her willingness to listen to what she can do to reduce the gender gap in scientific fields for Mexico. Laura Castro, FBS COO, advised women to have agency if they wish to follow a leadership path. “Taking responsibility means getting to know yourself, leveraging your strengths and identifying your weaknesses, not being afraid to ask for opportunities to grow, build professional connections, and seek for mentors and sponsors to guide you through your career, give you a different perspective, and help you to overcome your weaknesses to keep growing”. Mike Amend shared that in order to increase the number of women in leadership positions, company leaders often ask themselves questions like "What are the opportunities? Are we doing a good job of sharing the open positions? Basically, by making sure that all jobs are posted and within reach of everyone, we can give them the opportunity to apply". These and more actions we take with the Women of Ford group as well as other ERGs, open up the conversation with our leaders to seek a more equitable workplace.

Let's keep it simple

Winners of the Simplification Challenge were recognized during the visit. The challenge, which took place in Mexico, is part of the global innovation strategy for the FBS Centers. Winning ideas were announced by Nia Harrison, whose group is directly contributing to process simplification and modernization enterprise-wide. The winning ideas were submitted by Salvador Espinosa, Ricardo Rodarte, and Alejandro Garcia, who proposed creative solutions to day-to-day process improvement opportunities across skill teams. These projects, as well as other cost and quality initiatives the FBS Centers are working on, will affect most of the End-to-End Processes and generate significant savings and added value for the Company. This is how Ford Business Solutions contributes to Ford+ and global business transformation.