How Santosh Singh is bringing manufacturing discipline to AI work design

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Meet Santosh Singh, Senior VP, Corporate Functions: HR, Legal, Corp Communications at DENSO

An engineer by training, Santosh spent six to seven months early in his career on a production floor, building a machine from its individual parts. Later roles across process improvement, business transformation and HR reinforced the lesson: combine technical knowledge with the expertise of the people doing the work.

As Senior Vice President, Corporate Functions at DENSO, he brings a Six Sigma mindset to AI: define the problem, measure the work, understand its causes and test improvements. Technology is one possible intervention within that process.

For Santosh, understanding how work changes and helping people develop belong in the same conversation. Skills-based career planning at DENSO needed a connection to the work itself: the tasks, responsibilities and decisions that shape what employees need to learn next.

His starting question puts the purpose plainly: “Of course, there’s efficiency to be gained, but towards what end?”

Human judgment starts with understanding the work

Santosh points to the manufacturing principle of genchi genbutsu: going to the place of work to observe what is happening. An experienced person can notice an abnormality that a performance measure might miss.

That ability matters in work supported by AI. Judgment and discernment are skills organizations need to develop deliberately, through practical experience and opportunities to test observations against reality.

"Think about the work first, think about the issue, think about why."

Make employees participants in what comes next

Asked whether employees should see task-level information, Santosh emphasized bringing them into the problem-solving journey and explaining its purpose. With trust established, people can use the insight to make decisions and contribute ideas. “This is a trust curve.”

His concern extends to the next generation: how will people develop judgment without opportunities to practice, observe and solve problems?

How DENSO is building a picture of work the business can trust

Build the architecture of work

DENSO broke work down to tasks and subtasks using Reejig’s Work Architecture, creating a common foundation before deciding how work should change.

Build an architecture the business trusts

Validating with leaders and the people doing the work created a foundation the business recognizes, rather than an HR view pushed into the organization.

Reimagine work across the value chain

Rather than automating tasks inside today’s processes, DENSO is looking at bottlenecks and handoffs across functions to rethink the work and unlock capacity.

Deliberately design humans + AI

Santosh is moving beyond a binary choice: where humans lead, where they rely on AI, where AI works under supervision and where they co-create.

“Human in the loop cannot be eliminated. In fact, it has to be strengthened in the age of AI.”

What’s next: connect work to the future workforce

DENSO is using its Work Architecture to make skills and career development more real and to bring that intelligence into five-year workforce planning.

What other leaders can take from this

Define the problem before the tool

Technology is one possible intervention, chosen after the causes are understood.

Validate with the people who do the work

Their participation builds the trust that later redesign depends on.

Design time for judgment

As AI takes on tasks, people still need ways to practice and learn.

Behind the transformation

How Santosh worked with Reejig to build a Work Architecture the business trusts, validated at 90% against real work.

Working with Reejig, the work output aligned 90% with what people actually did.

Santosh Singh DENSO

Learn how leaders like Santosh use Reejig to understand work, prove value and scale AI work design. Book a demo →

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