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DEARBORN, Mich. — Among several senior leadership shifts announced Thursday, Ford said that the role of Jim Farley, who serves as the automaker's group vice president of global marketing and Canada, Mexico and South America operations, will be significantly more comprehensive and far-reaching starting next month.

On Aug. 1, Farley will become what Ford called its "global leader for marketing, sales and service around the world." The automaker has never had one single leader to head up marketing, sales and service on a global basis. 

This move is part of strengthening the company's One Ford plan.

Farley came aboard in November 2007 and has headed up the automaker's global marketing operations ever since. Then he assumed additional duties of overseeing Ford's operations in Canada, Mexico and South America in September.

Farley will now lead the automaker's efforts in developing a bolstered global marketing, sales and service unit that will accompany the areas of global product development, global manufacturing and global purchasing. The automaker said these efforts are part of Ford's plans to continue to upgrade its brand image on a global scale and roll out "an unprecedented number of vehicles."

Farley and Derrick Kuzak, Ford's group vice president of global product development, will team up as Ford continues to develop its lineup across the world.

"As we accelerate our profitable growth plan around the world, it is critical that we build a world-class global marketing, sales and service operation. There is no one better to lead this effort than Jim Farley," explained Alan Mulally, Ford's president and chief executive officer.

"Jim has been instrumental in building the Ford brand to unprecedented strength in North America, and we are fortunate to have his experience and expertise to accelerate this progress globally," he added.

Farley's augmented role was just one of several announcements the automaker made as it re-positioned its global leadership.

Ford also revealed that it is adjusting the duties of John Fleming, an executive vice president who not only is the chairman and CEO of Ford of Europe, but also the head of global manufacturing and labor affairs. 

When the deal with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Limited, which is purchasing the Volvo brand closes — a move anticipated to happen this quarter — Fleming will solely serve as head of global manufacturing and labor affairs, while Stephen Odell will take over as chairman and CEO of Ford Europe.

Odell is the current CEO of Volvo Cars. As part of his new role, he has been appointed to serve as a Ford group vice president, as well.

Continuing on, Ford also announced that Stuart Rowley, who currently serves as chief financial officer with Volvo, will assume the same position with Ford of Europe. 

Ford of Europe has had an acting CFO since the end of last year — Bryan Myers — and he will move back into the position he held before: controller for marketing, sales and service at Ford of Europe.

These four changes all become effective when the Volvo deal closes. 

Meanwhile, Ford further discussed how it is changing its operations in Canada, Mexico and South America, moves which are being made in conjunction with Farley's expanded position.

The current president and CEO of Ford of Mexico Eduardo Serrano will move into the role of executive director of Latin America beginning Aug. 1. As such, he will head up Ford's Mexican and South American operations.

Meanwhile, Ford of Canada will still have David Mondragon as its president.

Mark Fields, who is Ford executive vice president and president of the Americas, will oversee these two executives.

These moves allow us to strengthen our global team as we accelerate our One Ford plan and continue to profitably grow serving our customers around the world," Mulally shared.

Ford Upgrades SYNC

In other news from the company, Ford discussed the new and enhanced SYNC system behind the MyFord Touch driver connect technology that makes its debut in the 2011 Ford Edge.

The company teamed up with Nuance Communications in developing the new SYNC system. Drivers will be able to make 100 times more commands, and they will be able to use voice control more easily and obtain desired information more quickly using language that's "more natural" to them.

"Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside of the car because it allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel," stated Jim Buczkowski, director of Ford electronics and electrical systems engineering.

"The improvements we've made will make it easier for drivers to use and interact with it, even those customers that have never used voice recognition before," he added.

The speech engine, which Ford said is "at the heart" of the SYNC system, will be augmented with a wide assortment of possible driver requests that Ford and Nuance are working to integrate.

With this "library" added to the system, SYNC will be able to not only tune in and recognize more commands, but also decipher words that have the same meaning (i.e. "warmer" and "increase temperature") while also improving the navigation system with various point-of-interest names and business types.

"With this latest generation of SYNC, users can control the system without having to learn nearly as many commands or navigate as many menus," shared Brigitte Richardson, Ford global voice control technology and speech systems lead engineer.

"As we've gained processing power and learned more about how drivers use the system, we've been able to refine the interface. Customers can do more and say more from the top-level menu, helping them accomplish their tasks more quickly and efficiently," she continued.

Some of the improvements to system include the following:

—More direct, first-level commands

—Quicker, easier entry and search

—Use of aliases 

—Personalized access

—More friendly and adaptable

Explaining the upgrades in more detail, Ford said it first honed in on the voice recognition system and "Samantha," which is the voice drivers hear. 

These are the functions are the ones that drivers first utilize.

Nuance's Unsupervised Speaker Adaption technology was implemented to boost and accuracy to which SYNC responds to command.

Officials said it only takes, at most, three commands for USA to pick out a driver's voice. It can build a user profile quickly and can make adjustments for tone, inflection and dialect. This can allow for recognition performance to be improved by 50 percent.

As the specific trip progresses, the Unsupervised Speaker Adaption "continues to learn." Interestingly enough, it is also able to decipher the voice another user and build a profile for that person if he has a "markedly different" voice.

SYNC is able to make adjustments for voices in English, French-Canadian and Mexican-Spanish, and there are more languages in the pipeline.

"The power of the SYNC voice control system is its ability to understand and respond to more natural language commands — and the advanced adaptability of the speech recognition technology enables the system to train itself with each successive use," stated Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile.

"The adaptability of SYNC is pretty remarkable — a feature functionality Nuance and Ford worked hard to develop to ensure seamless customer interaction with the system every time it starts up," he added. "So even if the car owner has a cold or someone borrows the car, SYNC will adapt to the changed voice and process spoken commands without missing a beat."

The system's "voice" (Samantha) was also improved to sound less computerized. Ford accomplished this by making the size of her speech profile five times bigger.

"The additional speech units will help Samantha speak in a smoother, more human voice as she helps vehicle occupants accomplish their in-car tasks such as making phone calls, playing songs from a connected digital device and getting directions," officials noted.