Success story | Improvement of product development processes for a rolling stock manufacturer

Improvement of product development processes for a rolling stock manufacturer

CHALLENGES

As sometimes experienced by companies when developing complex products, an international rolling stock manufacturer was dealing with some performance issues.  On some strategic projects, they were experiencing up to a 40% gap with the initial project schedule and up to a 20% gap with the initial project cost baseline.

They needed support in understanding the performance deterioration root causes, identifying improvement levers, and defining a realistic implementation roadmap and delivery targets.

SOLUTIONS

To secure improvements, a 5 steps approach was set up:

1. Implement a multi-project procurement policy
2. Overhaul the development process, including the parallelization and frontloading of tasks
3. Review the configuration management process evaluation criteria for prioritizing changes
4. Implement an extended enterprise concept including co-engineering sequences with suppliers
5. Animate of hothousing sequences and design war-rooms

KEY DELIVERABLES

• Projects’ performance baseline
• Product development process overhaul
• Resources efficiency analysis
• Performance improvement roadmap

CUSTOMER BENEFITS

• 60+ stakeholders, from 5 functions, aligned on non-performance root causes
• -20% projected lead-time
• -10% projected cost
• +30% delivery rate improvement

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