Successful upgrade for 16,000 users and 120,000 projects at leading German car manufacturer

Last Friday, a leading German car manufacturer's successful version change to the current release (6.3) of the project portfolio management software Planisware Enterprise. The number of managed projects is 120,000 and the number of registered users is 16,000.

Each customer's vehicle development project may involve more than 450 subprojects with up to 40,000 associated activities. Coordination in scheduling is therefore an important success factor. The Central Department for Total Vehicle Development provides generic schedule templates and makes the schedule structures binding. However, it not only creates new vehicle projects, but also coordinates the corresponding vehicle schedules in the early stages. Coordinated schedules released by the central department then become the responsibility of the respective departments and product lines for further planning.

In 2016, the OEM considered opting for Planisware's project portfolio management software in all four divisions to replace its legacy system for controlling group-wide vehicle development projects. Before the group-wide launch in June 2017, a pilot project in the two-wheeler sector with 10,000 projects and 600 system users was successfully completed.

As part of the preparations for the upcoming 2020 release, a pilot for integrated resource management is currently being set up to analyse capacity bottlenecks throughout the company. Project initiatives derived from this are prioritised from a strategic and economic point of view.

Meanwhile, this OEM also has other implementations, such as workshop planning, where the availability and utilisation of mechatronics and measurement technicians, as well as the deployment time of hundreds of test benches and lifts, are coordinated using Planisware Enterprise. Contractors for workshop orders, which can take between one day and two months, are internal or external development departments or engineering service providers.