Engineering – Construction
Maisons du Nord
Levels implemented :
L2 – Tactical | L3 – Operational | L4 – Execution
Services used :
Process Consultancy | Technical Consultancy | Custom Development | Training and Support | IT and Hosting
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They lead in
Maisons du Nord is a subsidiary of the Thomas&Piron Group. Thomas&Piron was founded more than 42 years ago and continues to evolve. It is part of the construction sector and has over 22 000 collaborators. Maisons du Nord is located near Lille in France. The company builds between 150 and 175 individual houses per year and seeks to provide the best service possible.
Situation
In a competitive market, Maisons du Nord is constantly seeking new ways to reduce their cost structure. One day, they realized that they were struggling because of their “old” planning approach which led to many losses. To name a few, it caused losses in working time, losses in the quality of the coordination, losses on the purchases, losses due to penalties paid for late delivery and losses in the capacity to create valuable reporting.
Acknowledging these losses, Maisons du Nord understood it was time to reconsider the methods used to plan and manage their S&OP processes. This was seen as a condition in order to pursue growth in a more serene and profitable way. The company thus decided to stop using Excel and instead searched for a much more effective planning & scheduling solution.
Task
First, the company wanted to find a solution that could help them plan and schedule all their projects and resources in order to gain full visibility of the projects and their use of resources. Until then, Maisons du Nord had been planning their projects one by one; each one in a different Excel file.
The company also wanted to make sure that they could respect their commitments regarding delivery dates, thus reducing penalties for late delivery. Furthermore, they wanted to link the analyses to production. The collection of task progression “on the field” itself would benefit as they wanted to extract a global production plan to help them manage their supplies in a more efficient way, including the planning of their subcontractors.
Finally, Maisons du Nord wanted to generate instant reports, able to inform the top management about the “health” of the company. This would therefore highlight specific indicators such as: the number of hours sold vs spent, promised delivery dates vs actual delivery dates and supplies sold vs supplies delivered.
Action
The solution that was implemented is made of PlanningForce modules L2 and L4. At L2, a central planner receives all new project demands and designates a Project Manager in charge of planning and scheduling, in collaboration with the new project. If the project is accepted by the customer, the project is validated, and the plan becomes the new effective plan at the operational level (L3).
At L4, the supervisor sites receive the details necessary to supervise the execution of the project. Daily progression is recorded and directly centralized at L2 where the central planner updates the global plan every week. According to the global plan, the central planner can produce several outcomes such as a plan for the supplies that includes subcontractors, many reports concerning the progression and the comparison of what was planned vs the reality.
Result
Centralized planning process to discipline work methods
Competence Matrix that includes project templates and available resources
Better regulate Project Management
Clear guidance and benefit from a mobile tool to report instantly update progression
Instant reports thanks to simulations and exact data
Reduced delay penalties