During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jim Baumbick led Ford’s Project Apollo team in the company’s fight against the virus. Project Apollo created scrappy go-fast solutions to protect healthcare workers, first responders and infected patients. The effort resulted in the production of more than 120 million masks, 20 million face shields, 32,000 powered air-purifying respirators and 50,000 ventilators at Ford manufacturing facilities in Michigan and around the world. 

Baumbick also led the team responsible for the all-new Ford Maverick compact pickup truck – a whitespace product for customers who need a versatile vehicle they can make all their own with a standard hybrid powertrain. Beyond leading on this breakthrough product, Baumbick pioneered and championed an agile product development process inspired by software development to bring Maverick to market 20 months faster than traditional all-new vehicles. 

As vice president, enterprise product line management, Baumbick is responsible for global product and technology strategy and planning, as well as leading the global product line teams using deep customer insights to deliver products customers really want and value. 

Previously, he served as executive director of global product planning and strategy, leading development of the company’s flexible modular architecture approach – a key enabler for product development fitness. Baumbick also developed new capital allocation and cycle planning processes to prioritize winning businesses in support of the company’s overall product portfolio transformation. 

Baumbick joined Ford in 1993 as a Ford College Graduate. He has served in a variety of roles core to the product development process, including financial and profit analysis, engineering, product planning and program management, as well as operations. He was chief engineer for unibody products and engineering director for Asia Pacific & Africa, where he was responsible for engineering the global Ford Ranger T6 architecture in 2011. Baumbick is also vehicle line and platform director for the front-wheel-drive/all-wheel-drive flexible architecture underpinning Ford Focus, Ford Escape, Ford Bronco Sport, Lincoln Corsair and all-new Ford Maverick vehicle lines. 

Baumbick earned both a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Michigan State University and holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.