Truckloads of work ahead for Ford's PD team

[Road_Warrior]

http://www.carpoint.com.au/news/2011...-pd-team-24384

Ford Australia is reportedly developing a small car for the Chinese market. That was the word picked up and published by Fairfax media prior to Christmas.

There's a little more to the story though, as Ford revealed during the launch of the new SZ Territory earlier in the week. The development work on Chinese market product is the responsibility of a new annex based in the Asian country -- but reporting to the Ford Asia Pacific and Africa product development (PD) team.

That team is based in Melbourne and is one of three 'hubs' responsible for designing and engineering Ford product for markets around the world. The other two hubs are located in Europe and North America, but the respective region doesn't mark the boundary of each hub's influence.

For instance, the T6 Ranger (pictured) developed in Melbourne will sell in 180 markets -- and those markets extend beyond the Asia Pacific and Africa region (APA) for which the local PD team is nominally responsible.

During the Territory launch, the Carsales Network spoke with Jim Baumbick about what the future holds for the product development team sequestered here. Baumbick, father of three girls and the Engineering Director for Ford APA, was posted out here in 2008 to implement 'One Ford' thinking in an engineering scenario.

Much has been written and said of the prospects for Ford Australia's local manufacturing and its indigenous designs, but the stability of Ford APA's engineering base here seems assured for years to come, according to Baumbick. Using the T6 project to illustrate that the PD team here is viable for the foreseeable future, Baumbick also explained that T6 is just one project on the agenda for the local team, with its global outlook.

"Well, [T6] is a platform that we're clearly investing a lot into, and it's a core product to service 180 different countries..." he said. "It's one of the biggest investment programs we've done, globally -- with the intent that we're going to keep it fresh. We're looking to make a big splash in the market -- and once we do, we're not going to just let it go. I would be looking even beyond [a period of seven to 10 years for on-going development and revision], if you look at discrete chunks of time like that."

Baumbick's team has just 'completed' the new Territory and the EcoLPi Falcon has been signed off for a launch around the middle of this year. Then there's the EcoBoost Falcon following early next year. And these are just the local models. The PD staff in Melbourne are engaged on quite enough work for the immediate future.

"I can't discuss forward model plans or anything like that, but let me just say we've got quite a bit of work in the hopper..." said Baumbick.

"We're not just restricted to what we're currently working on here, we've got a number of other active projects... we've got tons of work. We wouldn't have invested the time, energy and money to building the capabilities in the organisation to do the Ranger, without expectations that we're going to be leveraging that... off those launches and into future product."

Multicutural workplace culture
Baumbick agreed that former Ford Australia president, Marin Burela's estimate of PD staff numbers around the 850 mark was "in that ballpark." Among those staff there are many expats from other parts of the world, people such as Ford's vehicle dynamics expert, Alex de Vlugt, originally from the Netherlands. While de Vlugt has lived in Australia for years, some of the other members of the team may be less familiar with Australia and its unique Ford product range (Falcon and Territory).

It was put to Baumbick that some of the newer members of the team who 'grew up' designing small and mid-size front-wheel drive passenger cars might now be tasked with developing large, rear-wheel drive cars or commercial vehicles with leaf-sprung live axles and -- in the case of the T6 Ranger -- body-on-frame construction. Does that pose a challenge for them?

"It does," replied Baumbick, "but I think that's the exciting stuff for engineers, right? Learning...

"A lot of the... foundation skills are applicable, regardless of the drivetrain. Clearly there are big differences in the powertrain systems in terms of front-wheel, versus all-wheel drive, or from a body-on-frame to a unitised construction -- there's a very different architecture."

Baumbick implies that there's a mentoring element for the senior staff working in the team and provided an example to explain the diversity of the knowledge base within the team.

"We have beam axles on E8 [Falcon ute] -- and we have a lot of global learning there."

"From an engineer's perspective, I think it's all good news... They have a chance to grow their capability, invest [in] and learn new vehicle systems. In our new structure, they get complete access to the global expertise."

"Quite frankly, I know from talking with them they're injected with enthusiasm around being a very active, key player in the global structure."

The impact of 'One Ford' on engineering
'Global expertise' is a bonus from the 'One Ford' program that Baumbick was tasked with introducing to the Australian-based PD staff. It's not just a regime aimed at reducing the number of unique platforms and drivetrains used throughout the Ford world, although that is certainly true - as exemplified by the Fiesta B-segment car and the T6 Ranger.

For engineers, it's a "culture", a "mindset", Baumbick says. And for automotive engineers, it's all about intellectual property -- rather than just rationalised parts fitted to a car on a production line or migrating to a global platform developed elsewhere.

"Coming out of T6, there are a number of areas where we've identified an innovative approach; the team's identified maybe some opportunity for clarity in global standards, that we use internally."

How that manifests itself ('One Ford' in engineering terms) is best explained by the pick-up box for the new Ranger, Baumbick says. The T6 platform was Ford's first all-new full chassis pick-up for some years. Market research indicated that earlier construction methods were inadequate for Ford's purposes, so the feedback from owners was fed into a global database and applied to the design and engineering parameters for the T6. The same information can be re-used in the event of Ford developing a new light truck range anywhere in the world.

Before the information was pasted into the bible of light truck development by technical specialists, it was subject to "peer reviews" and checked by "body structure management headquartered in Dearborn".

"A good engineer takes a problem and turns it into a solution -- and it doesn't repeat," Baumbick continued.

"The problems we should be dealing with are the issues that we're working on -- [they] should be new ones. Those new ones should then be resolved and that resolution should be turned into some corporate learning."

'One Ford' is streamlining a lot of the company's engineering endeavours around the world and the APA team is no different from its counterparts in Europe and North America.

"Prior to my arrival," said Baumbick, "outside of the Australian team, we had engineering functions, product development functions... in a lot of different countries. You could extrapolate that up to the larger level of... how the company was operating... as large customer/business groups."

In other words, the company globally -- and not just from an engineering standpoint -- was bloated and top-heavy, with labour being duplicated and cost efficiencies ignored.

Balancing job security and job satisfaction
With the long-term prognosis for the local PD team looking sound, so does the job security for the engineers. Engineers in Australia can be resigned to flitting off overseas in between big local projects to find work wherever they can. It's difficult to strike a balance between work and personal life in those circumstances. The upside for the local Ford team, from Baumbick's point of view, is that the PD staff can have their cake and eat it too. There's the satisfaction of working on projects abroad, without giving up the stable home life.

"There's so much going on in markets outside of just Australia. There's a lot happening here, but there's stuff happening in China and India that the teams here are fully engaged in.

"The engineers we have are responsible for forward and current models -- and at least right now we're very actively involved in all the current model stuff, as we've organised around pulling all the Asia/Pacific product development responsibilities into a single organisation."

Channelling 'constructive conflict'
With the Territory SZ upgrade finalised, does the SUV stand out as the project the engineers loved to hate? Baumbick was uncertain as to why anyone would draw that conclusion, but the Territory seems like a vehicle that must meet conflicting design criteria more than most in the Ford range. It needs to be affordable and sophisticated, powerful -- but more frugal than the earlier models -- comfortable and dynamic, practical and safe. As Baumbick saw it, that situation is no different for any other Ford product. He described the development process as "constructive conflict".

"I guess what I would say is that product development process doesn't change, whether it's all new, versus a major update, versus an individual action... there's always more stuff you want to do.

"You always gotta pick your priorities and you always have a defined budget. If it were left to the engineers, we'd probably always do more; we'd probably never stop...

"We need containment; define what's the right balance overall. We spend a lot of time defining what the right balance of the car is, in terms of trying to deliver a harmonious, substantially improved, complete vehicle.

"The art is making the right decisions and moulding a complete vehicle out of those natural conflicts. I don't know whether the team has a favourite [project] that they like to work on. I would expect that you ask any engineer and you'll probably get a statistically valid answer that would be uniform across their own special items."

Baumbick believes that engineers are motivated and inspired more by "the level of change or the complexity of change" and "the amount of impact in the end vehicle".

"They have the most satisfaction [from that]."

Applying the brakes?
Returning to the subject of engineers going above and beyond the call of duty, is it Baumbick's role to be the party pooper? He admits that it's always important to find a "careful balance", but he doesn't see himself standing in the way of progress -- quite the reverse, if anything.

"I'm usually the guy that's pushing further, for more. The way I like to operate is... 'if we can be more efficient on the input side, that means we can put more stuff in the same size box'.

"That's the method that we've been trying to instil in the team -- is to drive that engineering efficiency... so the cost can be reinvested in other items that are going to be meaningful to the customer and improve the competitiveness of the product."

The level of attention to NVH in the new Territory is one example of how it works.

Baumbick's views dovetail with a remark made earlier in the day by Falcon and Territory Line Director, Russell Christophers. When asked whether lack of budget for the SZ Territory development project was irritating, Christophers shrugged off the question with the observation that where Ford couldn't match the technology of the benchmark BMW X5, the company had found in-house engineering solutions to compensate.

It's the automotive engineering equivalent of Chinese dam building. If you can't afford the steamroller, employ enough human resource to make up for that. In Ford's case, the sheer number of engineers in the PD team allows the flexibility to work across different projects simultaneously without being constrained too much by budget considerations.

"If Russell was supposed to get 50 engineers, I don't sit there and say: 'He's got 50 engineers..." Baumbick said.

"If, to get the car right, I have to put 65 engineers on it, I'm going to put 65 engineers on it. I have to deliver all the other projects that I've got in my queue, but I absolutely would not let that get in the way of delivering the right answer."

But Ford wasn't averse to buying in technology for the Territory, where it could.

"Technology is one enabler -- and a technology story is EPAS on this car. There are other areas where there is incredible attention to detail; there's no need for whiz-bang technology or added cost to get there," Baumbick explained.

As an aside, the EPAS (electric power-assisted steering) for the SUV was actually an example of both approaches. Ford sourced the system from its US parent, which had originally developed that particular system for the US-market Mustang. For the Territory application it had to undergo some significant component and software changes, which was where Ford APA's know-how and "attention to detail" came into play.

Hand-in-hand with manufacturing
Mention of the Territory led to the question of the synergies between Ford's local production facilities and the PD team. It's been conventional wisdom that product development works better in a close-knit relationship with a manufacturing plant in the same location. Baumbick couldn't discuss the future of Ford's local manufacturing or the prospects for a locally-designed Falcon for the future, but he implied that the PD team couldn't work in a vacuum.

It was important to have some sort of dialogue between the manufacturing plant and the PD team, which isn't to say that the two have to be co-located. Certainly the T6 Ranger for Australia will be built in Thailand, but Ford doesn't see that standing in the way of the PD team's on-going work on the commercial vehicle.

"The relationship of manufacturing to product development? Yes, there is a relationship; it's an important one, working together as a team, but does anything predispose product development, on-going? All I know is... there is a product development plan that is more than full."

Passion misplaced?
In response to the observation that the Falcon enjoyed a passionate following in Australia, but Ford's local product range was not limited to the large car, Baumbick offered his opinion that rather than mourn for the loss of Falcon as we know it, the public should welcome the high-profile, world-class work being done on global projects like the new Ranger.

"I understand the relationship if all you're about is [the] E8 Falcon motor company," he said. "By its very nature they're completely tied at the hip, but we are the lead engineering activity for the global Ranger -- I think that's great news."

Interesting article. Lots of work going on at PD but we already know that.

Also interesting to note the comments about product development needing that inherent access to a manufacturing capacity and the future of the Falcon - although I think that comment may have been the journo interpreting it in a certain way.