Work-Based Learning in the Mexican Automotive Sector

In recent years, the cooperation between Germany and Mexico has intensified from an economic perspective as well as from an educational perspective. For instance, Mexico was the first non-European Partner Country at the 2018 Hannover Fair in Germany, one of the biggest industrial technology fairs worldwide. According to the Mexican Ministry of Economy, there are over 1,900 German companies established in Mexico. As these companies are investing a considerably high amount of resources in Mexico, Germany has become the fourth source of foreign direct investment into the country. Thus, leading German companies aim to influence the way other companies operate in the Mexican industry.

Germany has been active in Mexico with some socio-cultural offers in the field of basic education promotion, in which both countries have been working together successfully since the 1970s. Beginning in 1997, the German Society for International Cooperation [GIZ] has been advising the Mexican government on behalf of the German Federal Government (Gesellschaft für Internatinale Zusammenarbeit [GIZ], n.d.). The Mexican government has shown interest in establishing a vocational training system based on the German model in the last years (Dummer 2014). Besides, there are cooperation agreements that are to implement the German-style dual training system, which does not exist in Mexico so far. The German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training [BIBB] is working with its partner institute at the Mexican National College of Technical Professional Education [CONALEP] to transfer elements of Germany’s dual training system to Mexico (Steinmeyer et al. 2012, p. 29). This is being done within the framework of the project Further development of the Mexican model of dual vocational training [MMFD], a cooperation project of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development [BMZ], the Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF] and the Secretary of Public Education [SEP] in Mexico (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung [BIBB] 2017). The project’s overarching objective is to introduce dual elements into the Mexican vocational training system, for which the BIBB primarily conducts various advisory activities.

The automotive sector remains one of the most challenging industries around the world. Consumer requirements are changing rapidly, product lifecycles are getting shorter, OEMs keep increasing their quality and flexibility requests, automation is growing among the part production industry, expansion and internationalization of the product value chain increase, and the use of electric autonomous vehicles is becoming part of a new reality. Mexican automotive companies are appealing to the technologies of Industry 4.0 to meet the market’s requirements, and believe that these innovative solutions are the key to improving their productivity and enhancing their production (Mexico Business Publications 2018). However, to transform into a digital factory, business leaders must start by developing a digital strategy that targets organizational aspects [structure, culture, competences], establish the human asset as its main foundation, and settle its leadership as a transformational agent. The growth of the Mexican automotive industry is strongly driven by German companies, which are increasing their international production capacities by expanding existing locations and building new plants (Volk 2016).

In these times of change and when the new normal is conceived under the term VUCA [volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous], organizations are continually experiencing the permanent challenges of the digital era. Political instability, changing needs, intense competition, and the increased control and power of consumers are some of the factors that have urged the automotive supply chain to meet the Industry 4.0 requirements. Most of the companies have been allocating their resources to the development, acquisition, and implementation of new technologies in their production. Nonetheless, they have neglected that one of the most critical challenges is the strengthening and adaptation of current leadership functions and competences. In addition to the technological and organizational modifications, the leadership development approach and the traits, skills, and behaviors that the human talent has, must be adjusted to prepare future leaders for the previously mentioned challenges. In 2015, 1,660 companies operated in the Mexican automotive industry. According to the article ‘Crafting the future: A Roadmap for Industry 4.0 in Mexico’, 62% of the market players belong to the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises business group (Inegi-Amia 2018). In 2017, the automotive industry produced 20.2% of the Mexican Manufacturing GDP and employed over 824,000 workers, representing more than 1.5% of the economically active population (Inegi-Amia 2018).

In this regard, the Mexican automotive industry, as one of the production leaders in the Western Hemisphere, is expected to grow even more due to the ratification and implementation of the USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement].This requires an increase of North-American produced automotive product content from 62.5% to 75% by the year of 2023, and also establishes that 40% of automobile parts are required to be produced in an area where the average labor wage is at least 16 USD/hr., providing the legitimation for Mexican automotive industry to implement better automated processes.

Training and further education in Germany and Mexico, especially in the automotive market, are characterized by differences as well as parallels. Although both countries have compulsory schooling, the general drop-out rate in Mexico is very high despite this (König 2013; Steinmeyer et al. 2012, p. 29). Compared to Germany, Mexican education is generally considered to be overburdened by the requirements of Industry 4.0 and the quantity of students, which, together with the high drop-out rate, implies that the basic skills of many employees cannot be compared with the training standard in Germany. The dual training system, which is considered the figurehead of the German education system, is still being established in Mexico and is thus in its infancy (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung [BIBB] 2014). In 2016, about 250,000 pupils were already learning at vocational schools, but without any connection to a training company. The target by 2018 was that a total of 5,000 pupils in Mexico were to be taught in a dual vocational training system (Kramer 2016). Efforts in this area are numerous. However, even the projects implemented to date and those planned to increase the number of skilled workers undergoing dual training are not sufficient to fully cover the current and future demand for skilled workers. As a result, more continuing training measures are needed in addition to initial training. In this way, for instance, unskilled workers can be qualified according to demand and already trained specialists from other areas can be retrained for the automotive sector.

Digital transformation in all aspects of our life has become the right model when it comes to developing our future environment. As we go digital, we can recognize a series of changes in the production industry that lead us to face new challenges for the development of society, for instance, changing paradigms at the conception and implementation of new ideas. The way consumers perceive products and their core production process is expected to influence their consumption behavior and thus, in turn, influence production methods. Companies with a clear purpose and sustainability mindset increase their chances to thrive positively in the market. But when it comes to production methods, companies are looking forward to being recognized with adjectives such as lean, efficient, low cost, green, high tech and/or innovative. A side effect of the digital transformation is the false argument and belief that jobs for people will be negatively affected. We have already experienced the first, second, and third technological revolutions and these experiences tell us that the transformation only positively changes people’s skills requirements. Within the scope of a study, for which200 companies were surveyed, 56% of those expect the number of people in the workforce to stay constant or even increase. Nonetheless, demographic challenges could present special cases, such as in the case of Germany, where the workforce is expected to decrease by 3.5 million fewer trained employees by 2030 compared to today. In this case, it is very likely that digitalization can help to decrease that necessity up to 2 million.

For the digitalization of the industry, a new mindset is required; companies are changing the recruitment processes and the benefits as well to fit new profile demands. New qualifications are already described in job advertisements, and to take the most of what the digital environment has to offer, different strategies are implemented or expected to be implemented in the organizations. Companies expect that highly trained, skilled employees start to grow among their workforce over the next 5 years. In the higher education range, the growth is expected to increase by 5 percentage points, rising from 19% to 24% of the total workforce Vocational training is expected to maintain 59% of the required employment base, and unskilled workers are expected to decrease from 21% to 17% of the total workforce. For instance, the amount of people trained in the areas of data analytics or software programmers is expected to increase, while, on the other hand, the number of line workers required in new production lines will tend to decrease (Geissbauer et al. 2017, pp. 31–38).

A survey was carried out by the Institute of Industrial Management at the RWTH University, to obtain valuable data that supports the development of a leadership framework that satisfies the needs of the Industry 4.0 in the Mexican automotive industry. The survey contained a series of questions that targeted the analysis of People, Technology, and Organization. The results showed that ‘Talent development’, ‘Change-oriented vision’, and ‘the ability to inspire and motivate collaborators’ were ranked number 1, 2, and 3 respectively; respondents also believed that today’s and future leaders must have ‘Change management’, ‘Adaptability’, and ‘Result-oriented vision’ within their skillsets (Paez Garza 2020, p. 64).

The concept of leadership development is considered key within a set of skills that define the personality of actors who guide an organization. Moreover, it is critical to note that this skillset evolves along with the emergence of new technology and knowledge. Today, many business leaders are overwhelmed with a wide array of innovative technologies that are saturating the automotive market. As mentioned in the book ‘The Technology Fallacy’, there is a mismatch between the rate of technological change and the responsiveness that people, organizations, and public institutions have towards it (Kane et al. 2019, p. 29). Leaders are required to develop a business strategy that provides their companies, including all stakeholders, with the capabilities to efficiently embrace the technological, organizational, and social changes that the Industry 4.0 generates.

The previously mentioned low availability of professionals capable of performing in digital factories has generated a latent conflict between organizations; this challenge is the result of the other disruptive trends in this branch. Business leaders must strengthen their current human capital development strategy so that they mainly rely on the actual workforce, instead of replacing current employees with external talent. To achieve digital transformation, the adaptation of the corporate culture is one of the first tasks on the ‘to-do’ list. The organizational performance of a company can be improved when its culture is aligned with the business strategy, its organizational structure, its human capital, and the market requirements. To develop a culture that meets the needs of the digital era, specifically in the automotive industry, leaders must start by determining, which is the current state of their corporate culture, followed by evaluating the industry where the organization operates, considering the maturity of the market, customer requirements, as well as challenges and disruptive trends. To process the evaluation of the actual situation, dimensions or variables must be selected to determine the desired corporate culture. By doing this, executives can locate their organization in a two-dimensional plane that will facilitate the process of identifying the behaviors and core values that their workforce needs to meet with the value proposition of the organization. The alignment of the new corporate culture with the organizational structure and business strategy is the fourth step of the reconfiguration process. High-level leaders are responsible for matching the desired culture with the company’s mission, vision, and organizational objectives. By doing this, confusion can be avoided, and cross-functional departments will be able to collaborate in the same direction. The final step is the implementation of strategic measures that allow the distribution of the updated corporate culture; the application of change management methodologies is potentially beneficial.

Granting decision-making power, giving regular-basis feedback, and planning career and development paths, are simple but effective exercises that could strengthen the development of talent. Instead of focusing on building the company, managerial staff must practice empowerment and become people-oriented. The upper management cannot grow a company on their own; they need to transform employees into competent leaders, which will then help the company to flourish. The digital transformation requires employees with the mental preparation of driving and implementing change effectively. Strictly related to innovation, head officers must be change-oriented with an adaptable, agile, and malleable mindset that provides them with the ability to detect threats and reconfigure business strategies to maintain competitiveness. Managing change is a ‘must’ in the leadership 4.0 skillset; promoting change isn’t enough, the staff can detect problems and opportunity areas, run diagnostic tools, and implement changes through development, implementation, and improvements.

Motivating others plays a key role in the digital transformation. Encouraging employees to set challenging goals, supplying them with the necessary tools and knowledge to operate efficiently, and leading through others will improve the overall organization’s performance. Leaders who empower, ask questions, and delegate authority instead of tasks, will not acquire followers, they will develop more leaders, which provokes organizational sustainability (Craig Groeschel 2018, p. 1). Roy et al. described relationship building as another main skill needed for effective virtual leadership, to build cooperation and trust, there must be a well-defined leader-follower relationship between the work team members. Building a strong and solid relationship can help to solve issues faster and ensure the sharing of information and knowledge between peers. One main component is trust, where all actions count regarding creating an environment of trust at work. Also, delegating activities, honest and non-critical communication, and last but not least, trust is built by fulfilling commitments made to the team (Roy 2012, p. 57). Today product development and production are done through the cooperation between multidisciplinary team members, involved in different stages to solve issues that arise during the life cycle of goods. Therefore, one important skill required by global companies today is the ability to work in teams.

As verbal communication through virtual media becomes of higher relevance, being able to communicate effectively in the work environment is crucial to establish goals at every level of the organization. From the C-Suite to the shop floor operative staff members, transmitting clear objectives avoids waste of time and resources in all processes. In the study of leadership ability to communicate with others, certain personality traits of emerging leaders were given a relatively more important role, which often include sociability, extraversion, nurturance, or assertiveness. These traits are often evaluated directly through the implementation of assessment centers, in which other capacities, such as non-verbal communication, are overlooked. However, this could have its root in the fact that measuring the quality of the message could be a challenging task. As Riggio et al. exposed in 2003, if measuring the impact of a message were easier, it would not be surprising that saying the right words at the right moment would be more important than being extroverted. (Riggio et al. 2003, pp. 83–84). In oral communication, encoding and decoding messages clearly is a critical characteristic for the leader’s effectiveness. This is crucial to developing good interpersonal relationships with team members and peers. Encoding provides the correct words by the leader to clearly explain what is required and expected and leaving no doubt in the listeners. Decoding a message includes, apart from listening, also awareness of the time and environment in which the person communicating experiences the events of the message. Another particular characteristic involved in the effective communication is the role-playing of leaders, which is related to self-monitoring. In such situations, leaders analyze their environment and the peers who are sharing the environment to adapt their behavior according to the situation that involves them. (Riggio et al. 2003, p. 85).

Today the digital presence of organizations has become a backbone to attract new customers, improve its public relationships, and even attract new talent to the company. Nonetheless, not all users have developed the same skills and logic to deal with this new approach. Hence, companies must be aware of what skills are necessary to be developed among their employees towards a digital fluency. Initially, Miller and Barlett started with the already described concept of Information Literacy [IL] to describe the ability of knowing, identifying, finding, evaluating, organizing and using existing information to create new knowledge. They also suggested that this term is used as the basis to create the term digital literacy, which is the ability to make an informed judgment about what is found online but making an emphasis on the fact that abilities to reach literacy are independent of digital technology. Therefore, Miller and Barlett suggest that digital fluency includes the abilities that are involved in and related to digital literacy, but have their roots in digital technology. (Miller and Bartlett 2012, pp. 36–38).

Industry 4.0 has forced the organizations to rethink the way they are developing their human talent. Still, many companies rely on traditional classroom-based programs that, for today’s changing world, are not adequate. The E-Mas program, with its blended structure, is part of the Vertical and Systemic model that counteracts the deficiencies that traditional horizontal programs have. Some of the benefits that individuals experience by participating in a blended learning course are:

The certificate course ‘Chief Workplace-Innovation Manager’ of the Institute for Industrial Management at RWTH Aachen University provides participants with extensive expertise in the fields of competence development for the transformation towards Industry 4.0. Important topics that will be dealt with include the goals of transformation, the creation of working environments that promote learning, the integration of competence development and work processes as well as comparative management approaches for dealing with German and Mexican cultural differences. The target group consists of specialists and operative executives in the fields of work design, production management, and human resources management.

During the development of the course, intensive surveys in the form of personal interviews and questionnaires have been conducted to identify special needs. Furthermore, the content is less generic and far more highly company-specific, especially regarding company development. Thus, even a module about intercultural management was developed since this is an important challenge in German companies. Learning methods in the module ‘Work design and competence development that promotes learning’ were selected according to the specific needs of the Mexican automotive sector.

The participants were selected by companies and their respective HR/production departments and at the beginning of the course, a competence balancing by e-learning was carried out. Participants were motivated to use their company examples and to present real-life problems to develop real practical solutions. Moreover, courses were mostly planned as in-house courses.

The principles of the methodology and didactics of the course are reflected in case-based learning units. Apart from this, great importance is attached to the fact that face-to-face course units and e-learning units took place as group learning phases and group work. However, each participant, whether in group or single work, learned how to compile and learn for themselves during individual tasks.

Transfer tasks had to be defined at the end of the course to all three modules and were checked 3–6 months later. Also, supervisors were informed about the content acquired in the course to foster implementation and promote positive developments in their teams.

Before the implementation and during the execution of the course, the e-learning units were professionally accompanied. Most importantly, constant access to the learning materials was made possible through the e-learning platform. Furthermore, to ensure the flexibility and agility of the learning content, continuous adaptions and improvements to the course were made by including feedback and further developments of the content.

The MTM ASSOCIATION offers courses to achieve the MTM-practitioner qualification. The MTM practitioner is the guarantor for MTM‘s compliance, accordingly, being the contact person for works councils, employees, and executives to design the MTM application in the company. Qualification as an MTM practitioner conveys knowledge and skills for the application of the MTM process, in particular the application of the individual MTM process module systems for the planning, design, and optimization of processes, work systems, and products. The target group consists of specialist and operational executives from the fields of industrial engineering, planning, time management, work preparation, production, logistics, occupational safety and health, product, and equipment construction as well as the works council and other interest groups.

Here too, intensive surveys were conducted. For this purpose, personal interviews and questionnaires were carried out to identify specific requirements. Special focus was laid on the training of the MTM experts in Mexico and the cooperation with MTM Mexico was important in this respect.

The participants for the course were selected by companies and their respective HR/production departments and the courses were mostly planned as inhouse courses or completely planned as e-learning courses. As real-life examples and problems in work situations are highly educational, participants were motivated to use and share their company examples.

The course is based on case-based learning units to ensure work orientation. Moreover, group learning phases and group work promote individual learning potential.

The support of learning and transfer through refreshment training after three years for MTM instructors has been proven to be successful. Furthermore, supervisors were informed about the content acquired in the course to foster implementation.

Printed MTMA learning material was handed over to each participant and constant adaptations to the course involving feedback were made.

The certificate course ‘Expert Industrial Tool and Die Making‘ of the WBA Aachener Werkzeugbau Akademie, contains core elements of industrial tool making and conveys to the participants’ concrete concepts and methods, with which traditionally more skilled tool-making companies can develop into industrial tool-making companies of international standard. Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to use current manufacturing technologies to optimize tooling processes, detect tool damage, and self-remediate. The target group consists of manufacturing professionals and operational leaders in toolmaking at Mexican automobile manufacturers and suppliers.

Before developing learning content, intensive surveys were conducted – personally and with questionnaires to identify special needs of the company. Moreover, the learning content was aimed at highly company-specific development, thus, even different formats were implemented to customers’ needs. For instance, a one-week course and a three-week course were established and a stronger focus on repair and maintenance was offered.

Once more, the participants were selected by companies and their respective HR/ production departments, and participants were motivated to introduce their company examples and present real-life problems they faced in everyday working situations. The courses were mostly planned as in-house courses or in facilities that enabled learning with machines and tools.

The structure of the course was based on case-based learning units. Furthermore, great importance was attached to face-to-face presence course units, and e-learning units took place as group learning phases and group work. However, individual tasks were not neglected, so that optimal learning results, whether in a group or single work assignments, were ensured.

The support of learning and transfer was made possible by performance reviews. On that, supervisors were informed about the content acquired in the course to foster implementation.

The sustainability of the content was ensured by accompanying webinars before the beginning and during the course. Adaptations to the course were included after obtaining feedback from the participants and companies. Moreover, permanent access was provided by media [tablets] during the course.

The certificate course ‘Lean Management 4.0 Expert’ of the WBA Aachener Werkzeugbau Akademie, imparts the participant’s application-oriented knowledge and ability regarding the introduction and implementation of principles and methods of Lean Thinking for Industry 4.0. Lean Thinking is based on the five basic principles customer value, value stream, flow processes, pull principles, and perfection. In the course offered by the WBA, these principles are picked up and extended by the perspective of transformation according to a future-oriented and sustainable lean training. The target group consists of specialist and operational executives entrusted with the implementation of organizational change processes in the areas of production, administration, maintenance, and development.

To develop learning content and goals, intensive surveys were conducted. This took place in the form of personal interviews and a questionnaire to identify special needs. Lean experts of TEC de Monterrey/ITESM participated in the tailor-made course development.

The participants were selected by companies and their respective HR/production departments and in the beginning, the courses were mostly planned as in-house courses. Participants were encouraged and motivated to use their company examples and to present real-life problems to develop real practical solutions.

The methodology and didactics are characterized by interactive workshops, group learning phases, and group work and, to ensure a well-rounded learning result, an individual task that requested the application of the already learned content.

The participant’s supervisors were informed about the content acquired and used the results of the success controls in the course to foster the implementation of the knowledge attained.

To ensure the flexibility and agility of the learning content, constant adaptions, and improvements to the course were made by including feedback into enhancements of the content. The focus from an all-over Lean perspective was adapted during the project to a stronger focus on Lean production.