Standardized Human Resources Development No Longer Works for a Once-in-a-century Transformational Period

【Speaker】
Ryuta Yamada
Software Career Development Dept. Electronics PF & Software Function Unit,
DENSO Corporation

Business Environment Surrounding DENSO and Efforts to Develop Human Resources

Good evening. I am in charge of training software engineers. DENSO is facing a once-in-a-century transformation, and the software field is expanding.

I will talk about our approach to developing human resources. I will explain part of our efforts, and I hope you will see the big picture.

I will focus on two topics. The first one is “Personal development as the source of organizational strength.” Individuals achieve personal development based on their will. The organization should support them, as it leads to organizational strength. The other one is a completely different approach, which I will talk about later.

Personal Development as the Source of Organizational Strength

Let me start with the first topic. As stated on the slide, “We’re all different, and that’s just fine.” Standardized human resources development no longer works. Let me explain the educational approach that we’re planning.

It is called “career innovation program,” and is designed to change the mindset so that engineers can design their own career.

As indicated in the center, the objective is to enable engineers to design their own career, which is very different from the conventional approach. After designing their career, they check their current skills based on the sommelier certification system, which is indicated in the upper left.

If they lack skills, engineers use the recurrent program to learn at their own pace and achieve personal development. They are then assigned to positions where they can play an active role.

The company members are expected to play active roles in their assigned positions to develop software. A professional, who serves as a mentor, helps improve their capabilities day to day. This cycle will be repeated in the career innovation program.

Previously, they had to think about their career by themselves and could ask for advice only from a supervisor. As shown in the figure on the right, they can now receive advice from various supporters and viewpoints, including a supervisor.

Specifically, engineers set their own goal and choose the path to attain it with advice from various supporters, including a professional. The process can be visualized by using the capability map, which is defined in the sommelier certification system.

The sommelier certification system is used at each milestone to determine whether engineers have acquired capabilities. Certified members fulfill their roles in appropriate workplaces. The key point here is that a professional takes the initiative to contact them. This is different from the conventional practice.

Development of Human Resources by Harnessing Motivation

In addition to creating this system, we also offer education based on a concept slightly different from the conventional practice.

As Socrates stated, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” This message may have made you pause. We consider it is crucial to develop human resources by encouraging and harnessing motivation. DENSO is seriously committed to this approach.

I have worked with outstanding engineers and asked how they improved their skills. These are the factors that I have identified.

Motivation is deeply related to “challenges.” Engineers want to take on challenges and work with special people. They also want to test their skills and have a sense of accomplishment.

“Learning” opportunities are also very important, and it is necessary to offer world-class opportunities. “Esteem” is another crucial factor. They want to experience excitement and satisfaction, and be recognized by persons whom they respect. They also want to have fun, share values with associates, and be recognized.

The final factor is “commitment.” It is essential to work in an environment where they can commit themselves and concentrate.

Such an environment is not readily available, so we will create a virtual environment where various people can gather from any country or organization at any time, can make plans and compete with each other, and even launch projects to showcase the deliverables and expand business.

We are working hard to create such an environment and build a culture where engineers actively take on challenges, continue learning, satisfy their need for recognition, and commit themselves to their career.

It is difficult to achieve this goal immediately. As the first step, we will take full advantage of contests to stimulate people, gather engineers who share the vision, and improve skills together. Eventually, we will create an environment that encourages friendly competition.

As shown in this slide, various contests are organized in the fields of edge computing, software, and cloud computing. These contests are held at various levels, including for beginners.

We strongly encourage engineers who think “I still need to improve my skills” or “I want to test my skills because I have improved them” to participate in contests and learn more.

These measures are intended to help engineers properly acquire the skills they need in the IoT society. Without skills, it is impossible to identify problems and think how to solve them. We are carrying out these activities because they are extremely important.

Three Contests Hosted by DENSO

Let me introduce three contests. The first one is the Micromouse Contest, which is the world’s oldest robot contest. It is a very difficult contest using AI-driven vehicles. Contestants must build their own autonomous vehicles, including software and hardware, which then drive through mazes.

DENSO has world champions who have won the contest each year. It’s exciting to learn from such outstanding engineers and take on challenges.

We had planned to host the DENSO Cup, and although it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we still hope to host the event.

Let’s watch a video featuring Yuki Matsui of DENSO, who won in 2019. An autonomous vehicle drives through this complicated maze in only seven seconds.

The second contest is DeepRacer. This race uses autonomous vehicles and a simulation-based reinforcement learning environment developed by AWS.

This contest has been made possible by tremendous support from AWS staff. We organized an in-house contest under the initiative of Osanai, who is with us today.

At this contest, a DENSO engineer unexpectedly set the world’s third fastest time. It is rumored that our leading contestants train in secret in the hope of dominating this global contest, and standing on the podium.

The third contest is the cloud contest, which tests skills at building a cloud system and solving problems. This contest was also made possible with support from AWS staff.

In 2020, AWS GameDay was held for DENSO. In 2021, we hosted a contest on our own by building a platform for emulating challenges by referring to AWS JAM.

Tomohiro Hamasaki, who is with us today, plays a key role. He is a brilliant engineer who won the bronze medal in the WorldSkills Competition.

We work with these people to host contests by ourselves in-house. Organizing these contests has a very high learning impact, and improves skills.

We will host a cloud contest again in 2022. I would like to conclude my presentation by showing the promotional video for the contest.

As you saw, our activities focus on increasing motivation while having fun.
We will openly promote these activities. Please join us if you are interested. Thank you very much.