Intelligente Entwicklung
Performance Booster -
Vakuumlösungen

Products: Vacuum pumps, leak detectors, analyzers, ...

Turnover: €1 billion

Employees: 4,000

Client: CTO

Development sites: 2

Project duration: 3 months

Consultant days: 115

We have developed the Smart Development Performance Booster program precisely for this case. Based on our 20 years of experience and more than 300 customer projects. It covers 44 areas of interdisciplinary product development - from strategy development to the process landscape and organizational structure. This enables us to tell our customers where the potential for improvement lies: Holistically, seamlessly and objectively. 

Two locations, many participants – and one goal: to effectively improve product development – irreversibly good. The project kicked off with carefully prepared kick-off meetings that brought all participants together and aligned them on a common approach.

Dialogue was at the heart of the project. In a total of 105 individual interviews with employees and managers, we built trust – and gathered valuable information at the same time. What skills are available today? Which practices are implemented and how well? Where is there potential? Open and honest dialogue with those involved helped us to precisely determine the level of skills in 44 areas of competence. At the same time, we introduced initial ideas for improvement, which had already been tested for relevance and feasibility in selected discussions.

After about 20% of the interviews, an important intermediate step followed: an intensive self-image workshop in which the consultants presented best practices and the participants reflected on the need for action in their organisation – as a basis for later comparison with the consultants' external image, but also to find a common language. It was particularly important to us to establish a common perspective at an early stage. We therefore closely coordinated all results with key individuals in a separate validation workshop – to ensure acceptance and to go into the board meeting with a strong, unified voice.

In addition to the capability analyses, we took a close look at specific projects. Along the critical paths, we showed how time to market could be shortened. A benchmarking of development costs revealed where resources in the company were not in the right proportion to requirements.

On this solid basis, we developed concrete improvement initiatives together with the future project teams. Clear implementation plans were defined for each initiative – practical, responsible and goal-oriented. The final step was the presentation of the entire programme to the board of directors – with a clear picture of what needs to change, why it is worthwhile and how it can be achieved. 

Analysis:

• 2 self-assessment workshops, 105 interviews, 5 project analyses, cost benchmarking
• Determination of capability in 44 areas of product development
• Determination of maturity level
• Validation of results with stakeholders

Improvement initiatives:

• Description of 12 improvement initiatives and coordination with designated implementation teams
• Description of further selective improvement opportunities and quick wins
• Evaluation of benefits and prioritisation

Programme planning:

• Time-based programme planning
• Cost planning

• The improvement programme has been described and planned and is ready to be implemented.
• The potential for reducing time-to-market by 30% has been identified and proven.
• The potential for increasing efficiency by 20% has been identified and proven.
• Managers and employees are behind the proposed improvement programme – it just needed to be approved.