Case study

Effective resource planning in product development for two integrating automotive companies

To enable growth, two automotive companies are integrating their business activities, and pooling resources in key areas within product development (PD). The scale and complexity of the integrated PD activities means that resource planning and management can not be done adequately with the different approaches and unconnected systems previously deployed. The principal aim is to increase the ability to resource the front end of vehicle programs properly.
    
PA surveyed both companies to establish the main issues, and highlight similarities, differences and opportunities. We defined an integrated resource planning process and identified a four-element system solution to enable this process. Business requirements and a functional specification were compiled as a prelude to development and implementation roll-out. The four solution elements comprised resource capacity planning, resource estimation, resource deployment, and a single data repository.

This project is estimated to deliver efficiency and synergy savings worth an estimated £3 - 5 million within two years of implementation. Much larger marketplace benefits were also expected due to improving the timing and quality in product cycle plan execution. PA's dynamic simulation capability is also being integrated, and has been used to provide an estimate of benefits projected to add over £200 million in profit to each company over a four year period.