The “Fleet Whisperer”
Joe Ferro, project manager Digital Systems Solutions IoT, is sort of a “fleet whisperer” at ZF – and a real #FutureStarter.
Joe Ferro has a unique skill set: being both an excellent listener and a good speaker. And he uses these skills to listen to the needs of commercial vehicle fleet operators and incorporate their needs directly into product development at ZF. He understands every detail of complex products and solutions, with the ability to explain them effectively to his customers.
An essential part of Joe Ferro’s job is to ensure that the customers are satisfied with a product.
A customer-centric Approach to Fleet Management
While many of ZF’s teams work hard behind the scenes developing new and innovative technologies for a wide spectrum of customers, Joe Ferro is combining his technical abilities with his people skills. He plays a vital role in the ZF Commercial Vehicle Solutions Division as a customer-facing Digital Systems Solutions IoT Project Manager. Joe works closely with both his team and customers on ZF SCALAR EVO Cast trailer telematics technology. The solution analyzes and delivers critical insights of trailers to ensure they stay on the road.
Joe credits an upbringing steeped in technical learnings to his current career path. Helping his father around his construction job site played an important role, but what made an even bigger impact was his participation in the robotics program at his high school. “The program gave kids and teachers the resources to build a robot and compete against other schools across the nation. I led the electrical team that wired the robot and helped with programming, with assistance from electrical engineers from automotive companies,” he explained.
Technical abilities plus people skills: Joe has both.
Armed with this experience, an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering soon followed. The Michigan native took his skills to an automotive supplier where he worked as a wiring harness engineer for the first nine years of his career. But the business side of things also interested him, so he went back to school for a Master of Business Administration degree.
The rest, as they say, is history. Joe added, “I found a job posting online for a project manager at ZF. The interviewer explained that I’d essentially be giving the product a voice, which I thought was interesting. I'm still leading projects, but now I am also working with product development, while being the voice of the customer to my internal organization and engineering teams. I make sure the customers are satisfied with the product they're getting and that we’re bringing value to them.”
“The product we are offering is a telematics device that provides track and trace capabilities – you can see where your trailer is and find it at any given time. Smart features we call intelligent trailer products are also installed on the trailer to enhance the value of the data provided to the fleet,” Joe said.
Joe Ferro and his team supply the broadcasting device connected to the iABS, or brain of the trailer. It controls multiple aspects such as aggregate load, which measures the weight of the trailer. Other features supplied by the iABS provide insights into the trailer “health.” This enables fleet managers to better manage the use of their assets and plan predictive maintenance, increasing their uptime and maximizing profits. “That's essentially the value that we are bringing. Telematics is a big benefit, so most fleets are investing in this,” Joe added.
Overview and transparency at all times: SCALAR - the next generation of fleet management.
Believe it or not, ZF teams often work with competing companies to maximize the benefit to their customers, and Joe uses the term “co-petitors.” He elaborated, “Being in a telematics space, since we're not first to market, we work closely with a lot of our competitors, and they become our partners. So, I work with our team to gather the product requirements and determine what we can and can't deliver on.”
Joe and his team do whatever they can to deliver what they promise, which boils down to one key characteristic. He explained, “One of the ZF core values is passion. I'm very passionate about electrification and having these products provide the most value for our customers. This passion makes me a FutureStarter!”
