OREANDA-NEWS. Hau Thai-Tang, group vice president, Global Purchasing, Ford Motor Company, was in China this week to review Ford’s business objectives with the company’s regional leaders and meet with top suppliers. 

“Our goal was to review the overall business in the Asia Pacific region and specifically discuss how the Purchasing team is delivering on the business plan objectives,” said Thai-Tang.  “The visit also provided us with an opportunity to meet with key stakeholders – local management and employees, our joint venture partners in China and our top suppliers.” 

Thai-Tang said suppliers are critical to Ford’s success. 

“An average of 70 percent of the value add on every single vehicle we manufacture is externally purchased from our suppliers so they play a key role in helping us deliver great products with world-class quality,” he said.  “They also play an instrumental role in helping us bring innovation and new technologies and features to the marketplace.”

As he meets with suppliers, Thai-Tang said his goal was to give them an update on Ford’s business plan and product strategy.

“In this particular case, we’re going to talk about innovation and smart mobility because we believe the solutions we come up with in China may be somewhat unique to the solutions we have in other markets because of the customer and regulatory requirements,” he said.  “We may partner with one company in North America but a different company in China.” 

As part of his visit this year, a special highlight of the event was the launch of the first Quality Round Table (ORT) in Asia Pacific. This QRT gave a deeper perspective to supply base on how supplier could contribute to fulfill Ford’s high level expectation, meet Ford’s requirements especially on quality through cascading those objectives into an operational level. It was an opportunity for Ford to give an update on elements of Ford’s business, quality plans and progress, which involve the company’s critical supplier partners.

Thai-Tang also visited some of the supplier factories during his time in China.

“One of the big strategic initiatives we have in Asia Pacific is encouraging more and more of our global suppliers to localize their manufacturing and value chain in the local markets so that we get the lowest landed cost and we get more of our costs denominated in the local currency to give us an exchange rate edge,” he said. 

China is currently experiencing an economic slowdown, which makes the timing of Thai-Tang’s visit especially significant. 

“In this type of environment there is often anxiety among the supply base,” explained Thai-Tang.  “We want to show them that our long-term outlook for China hasn’t changed.  It’s still going to be the largest automotive market in the world.  Ford is committed to doing business in China and continuing with our product plans.”