Engineering – R&D – Study Bureau
Punch Powertrain
Levels implemented :
L2 – Tactical | L3 – Operational
Services used :
Process Consultancy | Technical Consultancy | Custom Development | Training and Support
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They lead in
Punch Powertrain is a leading company in the powertrain sector. Punch Powertrain works with both automatic and hybrid vehicles. Punch Powertrain has grown steadily for the last 7 years and needed to find a solution that could help them to optimally manage their R&D projects alongside their 80 resources.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity – being responsible for Project Management in the automotive R&D department of Punch Powertrain – to get familiar with PlanningForce. Not only the tool was inspiring and an eye-opener for me. The team behind it was also very cooperative, flexible, and creative in finding solutions for the specific demands I had at that time.
Situation
Before contacting PlanningForce, Punch Powertrain had no PPM solution. Some Project managers were using Excel, and others, MS Project. The head of R&D had very little visibility concerning the status of the projects in the portfolio and was unable to perform capacity simulations in line with the scenario evolutions. As a result, there was significant room for improvement in terms of: resource allocation, project prioritization, analytics production, simulations, and portfolio steering.
Action
The proposed planning solution has been built around PlanningForce Tactical (L2) and the API in order to interface PlanningForce.
Phase 1
A Project Management Office cell is set up. Its first task defines project templates and resource profiles.
Phase 2
The projects are entered into PlanningForce based on the identification of all current and future projects. Templates are associated with those projects and adapted case by case, in order to reflect the current load.
Phase 3
The whole portfolio and resources are scheduled concurrently. According to the results, the model is “tuned”. This means that using it will require decreasing effort as time goes on. It is therefore increasingly automated. Once the results have been approved, the system goes ‘live’ and enters a typical PDCA cycle where a new plan is created every month following progress and analyses.