Denso is trying to steer its people away from that ending. The company prides itself on not laying off associates during the Great Recession, and it also has refrained from layoffs during the pandemic, Ronayne said.
“So we’re working on figuring out what our customers need and then getting our engineers re-skilled to deliver it. We’re looking at how to create programs to help them do it.
“What we want are mechanical engineers who also understand the other side,” he said. “Things are still going to break, and we’ll still need mechanical engineers to fix things. But everything has a chip in it now, and everything has software in it now. We want them to be able to fix both parts.”
Re-skilling will not necessarily require engineers to return to a campus setting. So much advanced learning is done remotely now that most of the engineers will be able to make the change without leaving their desks.
But the clock is ticking, Ronayne added.
“Our goal is to be carbon neutral by 2035, so we need to have our product portfolio ready by then,” he said. “Our first priority is to understand what our customers need. As our customers’ plans become clearer, we can begin to see what we need to do.”
