GM has always been a multinational company. How is its more recent push to globalization different?
In the past our regional presidents took both process (manufacturing, engineering, etc.) and revenue decisions. In the regional model of the older days, the president of a region would worry only about the requirements of that region — for example, he would think only about the safety requirements for his region, and not for anyone else. But, now regional presidents are responsible only for revenue growth, and we have global process owners who drive process optimization worldwide. Now a global process owner, for instance, will look at ensuring that every car meets safety regulations anywhere in the world.

Terry kline, Global Product Development Information Officer and CIO for Asia Pacific,General Motors

Similarly, based on where GM has the best small car expertise in the world — be it South Korea or China — our global process owner for engineering will decide where to engineer the next small cars. Our new Pontiac G8, for instance, is built on an architecture that came out of Australia.

These are things we could not have done in the old world, when we had one engineering center doing engineering for all vehicle architecture.

Who is a global process owner at GM? What does he do?
The primary accountability of global process owners at GM is to globalize processes around the world. Every day they push best practices on standard processes and systems around global centers. The global process owner for manufacturing, for example, will look at all of GM's 186 plants in 33 countries and will seek best practices from each.

We have five global process owners — for product development (research, design, engineering), quality, global sales service and marketing, global purchasing and supply chain and business services (human resource, finance, legal, etc.).

Do the global process leaders drive globalization for GM from headquarters in North America , or are they based in the regions?
Global process leaders are typically based in North America . But, these people are on the road all the time. Global process owners usually live on Northwest Airlines. Ralph Szygenda [GM's CIO, driving the company's IT globalization strategy] has set the expectation —

“I don't want to see you here. You have to be on my staff meetings over phone. Please dial in; don't be in Detroit.”

How does process globalization tie with GM's multivendor, standards driven IT outsourcing strategy?
We exchange about 10,000 files a day so that our 28,000 engineers across the world always get transparent data. Our IT has to enable this. Outsourcing of product development for us is different. We have captive engineering centers and joint ventures around the world. Our employees there are GM people, not outsourced staff.

What are the day-to-day difficulties of globalizing?
One, if you want to be a global process owner, you have to travel. Two, you have to win by influence and knowledge. People in China or in a joint venture don't always have to listen to you, especially when you don't own the whole place. Three, you always have to be available. You are meant to drive standards and best practices around the globe. It takes a lot of personal commitment.