2018
AWARD WINNERS
heat exchangers, and pumps. “I thoroughly enjoyed this role. I had an opportunity every day to apply my theoretical learnings to something tangible,” she said. Davis was a project engineer at Upjohn for fewer than
three years before moving on to Frito-Lay as a manufacturing engineer at a manufacturing facility outside of Detroit. There she was one of two engineers in the plant responsible for equipment upgrades and installations.
Driving toward Excellence at General Motors It was 1994 when Alicia Boler Davis began working at GM
and overall profi tability of the vehicle as the lead engineer and as the vehicle line director,” Davis said. As the fi rst person to lead both the engineering and manufacturing of a vehicle family, she took on the jobs of plant manager, vehicle line director, and vehicle chief engineer simultaneously. Davis was handling every aspect of the global small-vehicle program, which included a compact car and two sport utility vehicles. She spent her days making decisions on everything from customer features and content to engineering, validation, program profi tability, and production. “It was incredibly tough—but also probably the
Aside from loving math and science, she says she “enjoyed fi xing things and tinkering”—critical traits for becoming an engineer.
as a manufacturing engineer at its Midsize/Luxury Car Division in metro Detroit. During the early years of her GM career, she took on
a series of assignments of increasing responsibility as a quality director, material manager, plant planner, and senior production supervisor. From 2002 to 2006 she held body shop and paint shop
manager roles at vehicle assembly plants in Fort Wayne, IN, and Detroit, which included managing the daily operations with large staff s and signifi cant annual budgets. She took another step up to become assistant plant
manager at the truck plant in Pontiac, MI, in 2006. She was responsible for a two-shift, high-volume plant building light and heavy-duty pickup trucks. Although still early in her career, she was in charge of about 3,000 hourly and salaried employees building 220,000 trucks a year. She blazed another trail when in 2007 she was named plant
manager at the company’s truck plant in Arlington, TX—and the fi rst African-American woman in the company to oversee a manufacturing plant.
A Challenging Opportunity One of the most challenging times of Davis’s career was also a major milestone for her—and for the company. “My greatest challenge was when I was given an incredible opportunity in 2010 to lead the North America Small Vehicle program. I had, for many years, worked in manufacturing, where I had deep knowledge and was confi dent in my abilities. But then the company off ered me the chance to not just be responsible for manufacturing but also for the technical aspects
24 USBE&IT | CONFERENCE ISSUE 2018
In June, 2016, Davis was named to her current role leading GM’s Global Manufacturing. She oversees the global manufacturing, labor relations, and manufacturing engineering teams.
most rewarding time of my career because it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I had to learn very quickly while providing daily leadership to the team,” she said. It also forced her to become a diff erent type of leader, one that didn’t rely on her personal expertise in every area but on her ability to draw the best from people across many diff erent functions.
A Deep Focus on Serving Customers’ Needs Her success in that role was one of many reasons Davis was “an outstanding choice to be named GM’s fi rst U.S. Vice President of Customer Experience” in 2012, wrote Mary Barra, chairman and chief executive of General Motors Company, in a nomination letter to the award selection committee. Davis’s customer experience title was soon expanded
to also include product quality. That was another GM fi rst: putting the two functions—both of which heavily impact the people who buy and drive GM cars and trucks—under a single leader. She and her teams went to work with a mission to infuse the “voice of the customer” into every aspect of the giant automaker’s operations. The team’s work paid off . In 2013 GM was ranked by J.D.
Power & Associates as “the best automaker for initial quality” for the fi rst time ever. Under Davis’s leadership, the company also took its interaction with customers through social media and its Customer Engagement Centers to a new level. The following year she moved to yet another key position in the company, one where she was laser focused on making every customer’s experience with GM and its products a positive one. As senior vice president of Global Connected
www.blackengineer.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
