The Factory Floor to Failure Mode Avoidance with David Petrovic
Meet David Petrovic, a first-generation Australian with a career spanning over 30 years at Ford Australia.
David and his wife Lidia
David was kind enough to invite us to his home on very short notice on a dreary Saturday morning. Cruising through Melbourne’s outer northern suburbs, we found our way to his quiet street in Roxburgh Park and spotted a white Ford FGX Falcon XR6 in the driveway. We didn’t need to see the house number to know it was the right place.
We soon learned that there is a lot more to David than the Ford badge on his desktop wallpaper. He is a musician on the accordion and guitar as well as a part-time woodworker when time permits. However, there is no doubting that Ford has been a big part of he and his wife Lidia’s lives. Residing just a few kilometres from the company’s Broadmeadows facility, David has dedicated his career to the Blue Oval doing everything from building vehicles to engineering assembly line processes to the very last bolt.
Starting in Serbia
Like so many local car manufacturing stories, David’s first chapter begins many thousands of kilometres from Australia.
“I was born in Serbia, or what was then called Yugoslavia, back in 1968. My dad was a tractor and truck driver, but my parents saw that there was no real future there for my older brother and I. At that time, Australia was inviting migrants to come over to work and live, and they took that chance.
“We came here in 1971. Early on, we lived in many houses, rentals and hostels in Melbourne. The bulk of that was spent in housing commission flats in Richmond with my dad working as a forklift driver and my mum doing odd jobs here and there.”
Getting Around Town
Transport for the Petrovic family began with a car built across the border in Adelaide.
“The first car I remember my dad having was a Chrysler Valiant Regal VF sedan. They had friends with cars like the XA Falcon Coupe as well as Holden Torana that are quite unique nowadays.
“The next stage of our lives was moving out of housing commission and into our own home. My dad then bought a HZ Holden Kingswood and that was almost brand new in 1978. It was handed down to my brother when he got his licence. It was then handed down to me when I was ready to drive. It was yellow at the time, but I resprayed it to electric blue,” laughed David.
The electric blue HZ Kingswood
“Unfortunately, the transmission went on it and being young and needing cash, I couldn’t afford to keep it. It wouldn’t go in reverse, so I just parked it in front of the dealer to trade it in and asked, ‘what have you got?’ I just left it like that and ended up buying a Lada! A lady won it in a lottery but didn’t want it, but for me, it was a great car. The heater was incredible. You didn’t even have to turn the fan on! In winter, it was beautiful.”
The Driver’s Son
Despite his father’s history in all things mechanical, the passion for cars didn’t spark straight away.
“I grew up around Holdens, but I wouldn’t say I was a Holden man. My best mate at school was into Fords, but at home we had Holdens. I wasn’t really into cars, but I would follow my dad around and watch what he did with the cars. He would do tyres, brakes, engine and that type of stuff to service them.
“My dream was always to be a carpenter, and wanted to leave school early but my parents said I needed to finish school. I never liked school. It didn’t go well and I dropped out and got an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic at Mitsubishi Motors in Sydney Road. I was there for six months and now when I look back, I know why I left. It was workplace bullying, but at the time, there was nobody to report it to or talk to about. I had no choice but to say that I couldn’t do it anymore, so I left. That was my first foray into the automotive world.”
Blue Oval Beginnings
After leaving the Mitsubishi dealership, David holidayed in Serbia and met his future wife, Lidia. After three months, he returned to Melbourne. It was time to earn some money, but where?
“From memory, somebody said, ‘why don’t you go down to Ford?’. I went down there, walked in the door and they said, ‘yeah, where’s your passport?’. I went back home to get it and that day, they hired me! That was in 1987.
A team get together at Ford. David is on the top left.
“I was hired as a vehicle builder on the assembly line. My first job was to work on Trim Line 3 to put primer on the windshield opening and the back light opening so the urethane could stick when they put the windscreen and backlight on. You were shoulder to shoulder with people doing other jobs. It was really tough, because the assembly line just kept on moving. It didn’t stop.
“When I arrived home, I would see the dinner right in front of me moving across like an assembly line. It was a very weird feeling until you got used to it. When I joined, Ford was building the XF Falcon. The doors were on the car at that stage as we didn’t have a door assembly line, so you had to manage your way around doors that were opening and closing. We also made Telstar sedans and hatchbacks, Fairlanes, LTDs, utes and panel vans. There was a lot of complexity.”
First Impressions
We asked David about his initial reaction to the Broadmeadows facility.
“It was huge. It felt like a city of people. I was totally in the deep end, but joined at a very positive time with strong sales of the XF Falcon. That’s why they were hiring.
“In terms of the people who you worked with; it was always a challenge. Smoking was still allowed in the plant and there were so many cultures, but for me, that was good. I had grown up with a lot of different cultures around me.”
The Reshuffle
As the nineties approached, things changed on Trim Line 3.
“I stayed in that role for a year and then the next model came in. With the EA, they made a lot of engineering improvements and productivity gains, so as they improved how they built the cars, the number of people they needed reduced. With better facilities to help operators, I lost that job.
“I moved into body build in spot welding. That was tough. The spot welder was so big and it was suspended overhead. You had to control it and get the welds in the right positions. In summer, that was really bad. You were wearing safety glasses and full-length overalls, meaning it was hot and sweaty. It was very hard work.
“At the time, my brother moved to Alcan Aluminium. Ford wasn’t paying that well and I had only just gotten married, so I needed to get something better in terms of wage. I moved to Alcan and they had a lot of overtime with a better hourly rate. That was a three-year stay and then the recession came, which made it very hard to find a job.
“Meanwhile, my wife started at Ford in 1990. She was on the assembly line doing electrical test. I found odd jobs here and there including working as a painter in South Yarra and Toorak. I was also home a lot looking after the kids.”
Back to Broadmeadows
When Australia bounced back, David returned to the plant where it all began.
“The economy started to recover and while I had a couple of job offers, I figured that returning to Ford would suit us best. My wife and I could travel in one car and it was close to where we lived.
“I went back and started on production line again on Trim Line 1. Funnily enough, I was doing the same job as I did the first time. It was like Deja Vu. That job still had to be done, but it was on a different line with different people. The highlight of that time was building the last Ford EB GTs.”
Itchy Feet
During our short time with David, we sensed that his happy place is taking on the next challenge. That inclination changed the course of his career.
“On a production line, it can get a bit monotonous. You were doing the same thing 400 times per day and I thought I could do more. I wanted to learn all the jobs on the line, so each day I would ask around and if someone was away, I would learn that job so I could cover for them. I really wanted to learn other jobs.
“That opened up the door to become a Quality Launch Assistant, which was about training the people on the shop floor to build the next model. That was the AU Falcon. For that program, they were looking for people who were skilled in all aspects of the build to go into the pilot plant. They would build these cars with the engineers who designed all the parts, and we would teach the operators how to do things and give engineering feedback to make things easier for the operators which would ultimately make the line run more smoothly. That was a good role.”
David and Lidia early in their careers
The Divider
The late nineties saw Ford introduce a brand-new model that still divides Australians. We asked David what he thought of the AU Falcon when it broke cover.
“It looked too futuristic for the time. The base model had a grille that a lot of people didn’t like, but it’s certainly starting to build a following now. We had some quality issues with them earlier on, but they were ironed out very quickly. For every new model, you pick up things pretty quickly as you push yourself to make things better and easier, and the AU Falcon was no different.
“After it was launched, there were jobs opening in Quality and I worked there for a while. That was looking at warranty data, customer survey data and visiting dealers to see what the issues were which we reported back to the plant, and so on.”
Engineering a Switch
David’s curiosity awakened again and he took opportunities to explore the engineering field.
“A position opened up in what they called ‘Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering’. We would design the process to build cars on the line, rather than actually designing the product. I was an administration assistant and helped the process engineers.
“At that stage, there was another administration assistant who got me interested in computers. Before then, I wasn’t interested in them at all. That awakened my curiosity for the engineering area and how it related to computers. I started to want to learn more and ask for courses on drawing process control plans. That was a piece of paper which would have an illustration that you would annotate for the operator. It included things like how many bolts to pick up, which part to get and when and what torque it needed to be secured to. I did that for a long time.
“In 2004, I made salary because I could actually do the process engineering work. They gave me the opportunity and away I went. It took me a long time to get to where I am now, because I still had to prove myself as I didn’t finish school. On the job training really helped me through that.
“I got my next grade level in 2010 which made me eligible to get a lease car. My first lease car was a purple BF Ford Falcon XR6. It’s all they had in the garage. Every year, you’d lease something different and work your way through the range. I always made sure I leased locally-manufactured cars.
“However, I stopped working on local product after the Territory was introduced. I then started to work on the Asia-Pacific area and that first program was the Ford Fiesta which was designed out of Brazil. Then it was the C-Car program which was the Ford Escort built in China for the Chinese market.”
The Fate of the Factory
We asked David what it was like to live through the end of local manufacturing.
“They got us all in the canteen, which was quite big. That’s where they made the announcement. A lot of people were shocked. Many people were crying and very upset including HR, who saw it become public and watched everybody react.
“We had been through speculation of this ever since I was employed. People would always be saying, “we’re going to close down next year” or we that we were going to get another program in like building the Focus.
“A lot of people I knew on the shop floor didn’t know what to do and what was next. They weren’t at the right age to retire but at the same time, they weren’t the right age to get a better job. I was mainly based in engineering and even we were worried about what we were going to be doing.
“In hindsight, I’m glad it took so long. People needed to adjust, and I think Ford did the right thing to give them that time.”
David with the last Ford Falcon ute (left), Ford Falcon sedan (middle) and Ford Territory (right)
The Present
Still going strong after over 30 years at Ford, David described what’s involved in his current role.
“I work as a Design Integrity Engineer. We look at failure mode avoidance in designs. It’s about making sure the engineers have the correct documentation. When you go through a failure mode avoidance, you need to identify what the function is of the part or system you are looking at, and then what can go wrong. Then you need to look at how to fix it by changing the design. Our group makes sure everything is engineering with Integrity
“I really enjoy it. You meet a lot of people through this process. I’m learning new systems as we go. The last couple of years have been difficult, as we didn’t know what would happen with the T6 program which is for the Ranger and Everest. That’s was what we were focusing on, plus we (FoA) engineered the underbody for the Bronco. We’ve just got this new program for the Ranger and Everest, so there is a lot of work on now. There seems to be a good future.
“Another thing I continue to enjoy at Ford is the community service. We did a lot of landscaping after Black Saturday and one of the best things we did was build some go karts for a special school. We had to design kill switches so the teachers could switch them off remotely. Daffodil Day was also an excellent experience.”
It's in the Family
Ford has provided a launching pad for two generations of David’s family and counting.
“My wife worked at Ford for 27 years, and she’s currently there on a contract. She worked on trim line as a vehicle builder all the way through on the assembly line until the end of production. It was like a second home to her. Everybody was friendly and they all got along. We worked together for 20 years and drove there and drove back in the same car for all that time.
David and Lidia receiving their vehicle industry certificates
“My son worked at Ford for work experience a couple of times and my daughter also worked at Ford as a contractor during her last year of university studies. She loved it. She worked in paint shop and made a lot of good friends. She is in the car insurance field now because of her time there.
“We owe everything we have in our life to Ford. They have given us so much opportunity.”
David and his daughter Sandra in the Broadmeadows factory
The Driveway
The Petrovic family’s allegiance to the Blue Oval runs deep, and their driveways confirm it.
“We have a lot of Fords in the family. The FGX XR6 LPI is my latest purchase. I bought it used and it’s fully-optioned. My wife has a Fiesta, my daughter has a Focus and my son has an XR8 Sprint. My son lives up in Broadford and we swap cars often, so it suits us very well. I also recently bought an EB Fairmont that is at my son’s house. It’s being readied for club registration at the moment. It’s a really nice car to drive.
The other white Falcon in the fleet. David’s son, Ivan, took this photo at the Broadmeadows plant
“It’s hard to pinpoint a favourite Ford, because they’re all good! The Ford Territory was a fantastic car. The driving dynamics are just like driving a Falcon, but it was also useful to have the third-row seats that folded down flat. You could use it for anything.”
We must say another big thank you to David for his time and willingness to share so much about his career. If you’d like to meet more of the people who made cars in Australia, make sure you follow us on Facebook and Instagram.