Danfoss Cooling embraces Exepron’s CCPM solution and achieves a 91% on-time delivery from almost 0% in the prior year.
Have you been in a situation where a concerned customer calls you and asks you “where is my product?” and you don’t know what to answer? This best describes the situation at Danfoss’s Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Controls Division in Latin America before choosing to address the fundamental challenges in their delivery process. After implementing Exepron, the sheer jump in on-time performance and project portfolio stability is one of our favorite examples of what Exepron can do for an organization’s project portfolio performance. They first shared this incredibly story at the 2016 Exepron Annual Workshop – we are writing about it today to promote upcoming workshops.
Never heard of Danfoss? They’re Engineering Tomorrow.
The Situation
It all started with a crisis back in March 2015 when this division, headquartered in Mexico and in charge of building components for the company’s cooling products, struggled to deliver its projects on time. Danfoss is a global supplier to over 100 countries, and a faster, efficient turnaround was critical to the company’s future.Tired of poor project portfolio management, Danfoss took the time to honestly evaluate the gaps in their system. What they found was sobering:
-Multitasking that puts your average Millennial to shame.
-Unrealistic project timelines.
-Lack of clearly communicated project priorities
-Rampant Scope Creep
-Incomplete up-front project requirements
-Poor visibility into started projects
-No earthly understanding, let alone warning when their projects got off track
The Challenge
Mario Martinez, the Portfolio Manager of the division and presenter at the Exepron Annual Workshop said it best, ‘the client who screams the loudest gets the most attention’ approach is no way to manage. They had a late and unreliable project delivery system that not only lost key customers for the company, but also contributed to eroding employee satisfaction.
Rather than a reactive management model, the company needed a proactive project management method that emphasized visibility and monitoring. With Guided Innovation Group as an Advisor, the company decided to pursue a Critical Chain solution. They decided to implement Exepron – an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution with a proven track record of individual team and full enterprise transformations.
The Plan
Working with Guided Innovation Group under the direction of Mike Dalton, Danfoss implemented Exepron’s PPM cloud-based solution to drive a 12-month pilot program at their Monterrey, Mexico facility. The team separated the pilot into three phases:
- Design Phase: focused on changing the resource management strategies and creating a new standard for project plans and templates utilized by managers.
- Rollout Phase: training 60 members of the Danfoss team on CCPM over three days and introduced new project standards such as regular stand-up meetings that replaced lengthy reporting burdens. This reduced idle meeting time too.
- Evaluation Phase: based around overall throughput, it included a dynamic analysis of their resource management, communication, and cost improvements throughout their journey.
The Result
In the 2015/2016 business cycle Danfoss experienced only a single customer complaint, and 92 out of 101 projects were completed on time. Those few late projects? All by only a week.
After implementing Exepron’s CCPM solution, Danfoss now has:
– Clear status on all priorities
– Actionable daily stand-up meetings
– Project templates that enable quick decision making.
– A Clear Resource Requirement Planning
– An almost-100% customer satisfactionExepron enabled Danfoss what any struggling project environment wishes for: no more angry customers demanding answers about their projects and an intense boost in overall project efficiency.
It’s safe to say that the culture at this Danfoss division was affected too. With happy customers receiving their projects on time, the Danfoss management team is no longer under the same, punitive & stressful pressure. Happy customers lead to happy managers. Imagine that.
After the success realized by Mexico’s Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Controls Division, Danfoss has continued to promote Exepron’s transforming capabilities. In 2017, Danfoss began rolling out Exepron’s CCPM solution into their Danish headquarters and their two Chinese manufacturing plants.
We truly wish them all the best!
Experience more success stories like this at the upcoming Exepron Annual Workshop – September 23-25