The American manufacturer has established one of the three service centers in the country that will allow it to have globally optimized processes, instead of replicated positions in each of the markets in which it has a presence, in different strategic areas of the business, from Development of Product, Engineering, Purchase of components, Information Technologies, Post-sale and Human Resources.
“We are identifying activities with a lot of added value that allow us to simplify the operation of the company,” Castro explained.
From the Global Solutions Center in Mexico, for example, many of the purchases of the necessary components are made to supply Ford’s network of 70 plants around the world. Also, from Mexico, part of the cybersecurity of the company and projects are developed to streamline very specific operations, such as chatbot that can track the payments of the company’s suppliers.
“All this arose in our corporate office in the United States in 2018. Then all the countries were identified where we had very specific skills that we wanted to take advantage of: for example Information Technology, cloud computingcybersecurity,” Castro said.
Mexico has established itself globally as a competitive platform for the production of vehicles: the neighborhood with the largest economy in the world, added to some 14 trade agreements with more than 50 countries, and a low cost of labor, favored In the last decade, a dozen new assembly plants were installed, as well as reinvestments in other existing ones.
The mexican moment that the automotive industry experienced during the past decade even generated criticism from the unions in the sector in the United States and Canada, and sparked a wave of tweets from Republican Donald Trump, then president of the United States, which showed harsh criticism of the assemblers that they invested in Mexico to export profitable vehicles to the US market.
Although Mexico continues to be one of the largest vehicle manufacturers globally -the seventh in 2021-, the country has begun to align itself to the transformation digital that companies in the automotive sector live.
“We made an analysis of the skills that existed in each of the countries where we operate and the company made the decision to install one of the three centers in Mexico. Because several of the skills that were highly valued for the business were found here,” Castro said.
The Ford Global Solutions Center in Mexico hired 604 people during 2021, mainly profiles focused on product development and auto parts purchases. So far this year it has added another 200 people and the plan is to reach 500 new positions by the end of 2022. Some of the profiles that the automaker is looking for are Specialist in cloud computingsoftware and app development.
Several of these operations will be concentrated in a new campus that will open at the end of the year in Zona Esmeralda, State of Mexico.