Situation
The customer, a large automotive supplier, needed help with its Austrian subsidiary. The factory had a new product that had only been in production for 6 months. Due to the complexity of this new module and the production requirements, the production ramp-up at the plant proved difficult. The financial targets and production targets were significantly missed.
As a result, customers’ delivery and quality expectations were not met. Through a gradual escalation and due to the size of this key project and the long-term contract of 5 years on the customer side, this problem reached the highest management level.
The customer did not have the internal resources to solve these problems. The contractual partner was the Austrian subsidiary in consultation with the German head office.
The specific challenge was to make the complex production processes transparent. Implement the necessary improvements jointly and with the involvement of several departments in the production facility and at headquarters. Several downtimes in the production and process development phases had to be made up and customer requirements had to be satisfied in the meantime.
Specific requirements for the interim manager
- Experience in project management in the automotive sector and crisis management of production processes
- A broad knowledge of various industrial processes (logistics, quality management, quality control, procurement, supplier management)
- Knowledge of cost accounting and controlling,
- Leadership
- Strong communication skills
- Graduate of a technical university in engineering
- Various industrial management positions and experience in similar projects as an interim manager
- Project management in difficult and critical key projects and experience in the ramp-up of production facilities
Interim solution
Our Austrian partner presented the customer with 3 quality candidates within 48 hours. A candidate from the premium pool of our Austrian partner who met all the necessary criteria was selected and started the assignment within a week. The role of the Interim Manager in this particular project was Senior Project Manager. While most of the work took place in Austria, there were several meetings with subcontractors, Group companies in Germany and customers in Europe and Asia.
Implementation
- Conducting project and production audits to identify short- and long-term optimization opportunities.
- Revision of KPIs and implementation of new key figures according to lean management methods with transparent tracking of improvements
- Implementation of new methods and tools for long-term cost reduction programs
- Improvement of supplier-customer communication by management to reduce tensions between the parties
- Organization and management of training workshops
- Coordination with other international Group companies
- Implementation of methods and tools for medium and long-term cost reduction programs
- Continuous communication with senior management and other Group companies
- Achievement of the required output and financial targets
Result
The focus on improving quality began with solving existing care situations. This has increased product quality and stopped escalation problems with customers. It wasn’t long before several budget and production targets were met and some exceeded. This was followed by the implementation of a long-term program to meet the cost targets.
Once the project was completed, the interim manager worked with the client to create a program that would ensure long-term improvement in terms of quality issues. All IM responsibilities have been returned to the core workforce and the task force remains active. Some of the new methods, tools and processes developed for this plant improvement have become new Group-wide standards.
