OREANDA-NEWS. June 22, 2015. With the significant growth of the Ford China business, a substantial number of Ford Chinese employees have joined the extended Ford family over the past few years.  According to the Asia Pacific Product Development (AP PD) survey, an overwhelming number of new employees prefer to receive their training in Chinese.  They also want to network professionally with global subject matter experts (SMEs) to accelerate their learning.

With in-depth experience in product development (PD) and IT, many Ford Chinese Association (FCA) members in North America have the knowledge and passion to support the AP people development.  In December 2013, FCA and AP PD Learning and Development team joined forces and successfully rolled out the Knowledge-Sharing program.  As a result of their hard work, the team won the 2014 Diversity and Inclusion Award in the “Leading the Way” category.

In PD, the training is called “Asia Pacific PD Tech Talks,” which is a series of live knowledge-sharing seminars instructed by NA FCA experts on broad technical and strategic business topics.  Audiences come from multiple Ford AP teams: China, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, India, Vietnam and Japan.

In Dearborn, NA FCA members devote their evening hours to deliver tailored WebEx seminars to AP.  In some cases, FCA members leverage their business trips to China to present some of the seminars in person.

Most of the PD Tech Talks are presented in Mandarin Chinese, the native tongue of Greater China where most of the work force growth occurs.  Whenever possible, a repeat session in English is offered to include audiences from other AP regions.  Although this initiative has a strong PD focus, the team is also sharing the learning opportunities with other skill teams such as Purchasing, Manufacturing, Finance, Marketing, IT and OGC. 

PD Tech Talks leverage the talented experts within the company, build a global culture of learning and help retain high-potential employees to support Ford’s AP growth strategy.  The Asia Pacific PD Tech Talks prove to be an effective way to increase the skillset of Ford employees around the globe.

Supported by senior management, this initiative has become very popular.  Since December 2013, the PD Tech Talk seminars have been viewed by over 2,000 participants and have produced 4,000 people-hours of training.  Topics include Turbocharger 101, Crash Safety, Vehicle Dynamics and Control, and SYNC System Overview. The FCA global technical experts, who give these talks, consistently receive ratings of four or five stars and extremely positive comments from the participants. 

On the IT side, the AP IT Learning and Development team strategically positions the FCA Knowledge-Sharing program within the China IT team’s Lunch-and-Learn sessions. As the Ford AP IT team, located primarily in Shanghai, takes on the increased responsibility of managing the regional IT infrastructure and development, the AP IT Learning and Development team delivers a variety of topics to the China IT team, with a focus on global programs and architecture management. 

The collaboration between our teams in Asia Pacific and the FCA is a unique example of the One Ford behavior of working together to facilitate learning and knowledge-sharing between our more experienced engineers and new employees at Ford, said Paul Mascarenas, retired chief technical officer, vice president of Research and Advanced Engineering, and former FCA executive champion.

As NA FCA instructors and the AP Learning and Development team devote their time and energy to support Ford teams in the AP region, their dedication is recognized to further enrich the sharing and learning culture that represents the One Ford Going Further behavior.  

, “It is a great honor for our team to receive the Ford Global Diversity and Inclusion award. We are thrilled and proud of contributing to Ford growth in Asia Pacific. The Knowledge-Sharing program is entering its second year and we are adding more topics in the program to support Ford business globally.  Our team is truly on a journey to Go Further,” said Nian Xiao, IE analyst,  Global Product Plan Strategies. 

Well done and congratulations to the FCA and AP PD and IT Learning and Development teams on being the 2014 Diversity and Inclusion Award winner.