2007
PA and Nissan win President's Medal for world-first assignment
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21 November 2007
Last night PA, along with its client Nissan, was awarded the Operational Research Society's President's Medal. The President's Medal recognises the benefits delivered to date and also the major achievement in 2007 of enabling Nissan to build up to 5 different car models simultaneously on just 2 production lines originally designed to produce only 2 models at its Sunderland plant.
PA has been working with Nissan since 1999, successfully scheduling all production at the car giant's Sunderland factory, the most efficient plant in Europe. Nissan needed to build a third car model, the Almera at the factory alongside the already produced Primera and Micra but without adding a third production line. However, such an idea was fraught with complexities.
PA developed a user-friendly car production scheduling tool that can offer a choice of build sequences for each week's production of up to 12,000 cars. All this without breaking the 2,500 operational constraints governing how different vehicles and their features could be sequenced.
The project achieved a remarkable additional 30% in production capacity without the need for a further production line. Many knock-on efficiencies emerged - such as saving millions of pounds in paintshop batch changeovers and a 40% reduction in stock inventory.
Having proved a success at producing 3 car models on 2 lines, Nissan awarded the Sunderland plant the production of the new Qashquai model. PA further enhanced the scheduling system to handle 5 models on 2 lines and the Qashquai rolled off the production line as planned in December 2006, going on sale from February 2007.
Michael Simpson from Nissan, said:
"We knew this was a very difficult system to solve and PA had experience of solving very difficult problems".
Tony Lewins, member of PA's Management Group, said:
"This award recognises both technical and consulting excellence in our work with Nissan to enhancing their production facility".
ENDS
For more information, please contact:
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| Carol Briggs |
| PA Consulting Group |
| 123 Buckingham Palace Road |
| London |
| SW1W 9SR |
| United Kingdom |
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Tel: +44 207 333 6144 |
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Fax: +44 20 73335452 |
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E-mail:
carol.briggs@paconsulting.com |
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Heather Smith
PA Consulting Group
123 Buckingham Palace Road
London
SW1W 9SR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7312 4975
Fax: +44 20 7312 4639
E-mail: heather.smith@paconsulting.com
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Notes to editors
1. About the Operational Research Society's Awards
The Operational Research Society has members in 53 countries and is the professional body for Operational Research, which involves the application of mathematical methods to solve business problems and also and provides training, conferences, publications and information to those working in operational research. The President's Medal recognises the best practical application of operational research in 2007, judged against the criteria of demonstrable benefit, the intellectual and novel content of the solution, the likely longevity of the solution, and the excellence of the operational research.
For further information visit www.orsoc.org.uk
2. About PA Consulting Group
At PA Consulting Group, we transform the performance of organisations.
We put together teams from many disciplines and backgrounds to tackle the most complex problems facing our clients, working with leaders and their staff to turn around organisations in the private and public sectors. Clients call on us when they want:
an innovative solution: counter-intuitive thinking and groundbreaking solutions
a highly responsive approach: we listen, and then we act decisively and quickly
delivery of hard results: we get the job done, often trouble-shooting where previous initiatives have failed.
We are an independent, employee-owned, global firm of 3,000 talented individuals, operating from offices across the world, in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. We have won numerous awards for delivering complex and highly innovative assignments, run one of the most successful venture programmes in our industry, have technology development capability that few firms can match, deep expertise across key industries and government, and a unique breadth of skills from strategy to IT to HR to applied technology.
• defence • energy • financial services • government and public services • international development • life sciences and healthcare • manufacturing • postal services • retail • telecommunications • transportation
• strategic management • innovation and technology • IT • operational improvement • human resources • complex programme delivery
Delivering business transformation
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