[Case study] Infopro Digital optimizes planning and resources

Leading automotive information company for methods and spare parts finely budgets its studies.

Infopro Digital (3,600 employees, sales of €480 million, presence in 15 countries) develops digital solutions (platforms, software, trade shows, databases, training courses) enabling its customers from six professional communities (insurance and finance, automotive, construction, distribution, industry and the public sector) to boost their sales performance.

Its automotive business is the French market leader in data related to methods and spare parts. Wishing to develop this type of service on the export market, the company first needed to obtain a more detailed view of its study times. It then moved on to a phase of time analysis by cross-checking information. Philippe Sevot, Quality and Change Manager, explains Infopro Digital's organizational challenges.

A favorable French market, international ambitions

Infopro Digital designs car repair manuals for international manufacturers and private individuals. With this documentation now in digital format, the company enriches databases translated into 47 languages on an application used by its customers. It details parts, prices, the information needed to draw up estimates and insurance figures following damage.

The company is the French market leader for "Methods" and "Parts" data, providing a complete service. In the Methods segment alone, Infopro Digital has no competition in France in this niche market. It has designed specialized applications for windshield, mirror and windshield parts for networks working with insurers. Estimates produced using Infopro Digital's in-house tool must communicate with the insurance solution in order to be reimbursed.

The company's ambition is to develop its methods abroad, in addition to parts, where it will be rubbing shoulders with British and German operators, among others.

The challenge: in-depth knowledge of parts and methods

A huge database (95,000 entries) made up mainly of manufacturers' information is at the heart of the business.

"The challenge for the Production department, which is spread over several sites - Antony, Orléans, Bordeaux and Tunisia - is to retrieve the information from the manufacturers and put it into a database for publication on Infopro Digital's tools. The base remains unique, but the tools will take on specific parts depending on the customer. As a publisher, we benefit from special contracts to edit and recreate the manufacturers' technical documentation, which we supplement with in-house iconography and methods," explains Philippe Sevot, who is also in charge of documentary assistance.

Building a car is a complex process

A vehicle is made up of a complex set of components. A body can have 5 doors, and can exist in station wagon, convertible, 3-4 or 5-door versions. Added to this are different engines, gearboxes and chassis. Groupings are made during production. For example, when an engine needs to be changed, a group of vehicles is involved. In this context, a study consists of taking a set of vehicles and collecting information for each engine, gearbox, bodywork, etc.

A study at Infopro Digital is like building a "real" vehicle. So, for example, we inject a certain number of methods, parts and labor times into an Audi A4 station wagon sports chassis 2l engine with 7-speed automatic gearbox. Some teams deal with level 1 or 2 methods, others with original manufacturer parts, times or rates.

"Estimating the manufacturing times of a study was complex, and we were faced with inaccuracies and processing times that were deemed too long. We needed a robust solution capable of pinpointing a precise number of hours to specific parts of production. The Beebole tool was tailored to meet all these requirements.

Philippe Sevot, responsable Qualité et Changement pour l’activité automobile

Beebole: a user-friendly, flexible tool for tracking trends

Employees access an activity sheet via their desktop or smartphone. This is presented in a simple daily or weekly view. The "raw material" is a car. The employee chooses an activity from a drop-down menu of tens of thousands of entries. Each model has a "model group code" which displays all the elements related to the selected model. Infopro Digital has listed all the car models they work on, bearing in mind that a model may have a different engine, exist in several versions, and so on.

The company needed a robust system capable of processing this mass of information in the form of projects. The employee selects an entry and enters a number of hours and/or minutes. No need for a start or end time. Once the entry has been made, the employee can send the sheet for approval. It's a very smooth operation.

The administrator takes care of two things:

• creating all car models as they arrive,
• the creation of collaborators in the system and their access rights.

Grouping entries to define trends

One of the key points of the system: Philippe Sevot developed a system for grouping entries and giving them a new dimension. The car models have therefore been structured by make, engine type, etc. There are twenty or so groupings. There are some twenty groups, which adds dimensions to each entry in the list.

The list of car models thus presents the different makes, engines, displacements, etc. When generating reports, the administrator obtains a global view of all car models, but integrating the various predefined group criteria. It is therefore possible to analyze the time spent on all Fiat models, for example, or the average dismantling time for a petrol car, etc. The system thus enables advanced analysis and definition of trends by model.

Complex multi-site time management

Quality and delivery controls are added throughout the production process. Each stage has been detailed in the time management tool. The aim : to be able to precisely identify, for each vehicle creation, the time required to complete the "parts and maintenance" level, the "600 parts" level and the "torque" level. For example, completing the 600-part level requires 10% of the time for vehicle preparation, 70% for pure production and 20% for quality control. This is how the time management tool was specified from the outset. Deontologically, it was out of the question to use it to measure productivity, nor to use it during annual appraisals.

Today, French staff work 7.30 hours a day and 6.30 hours on Fridays. The week has been frozen at 36 hours and 50 minutes. Philippe Sevot has encountered difficulties with overtime: "We wanted to block the day at 7:30 a day. If the hours were exceeded, the manager had to make an overtime request, which required a specific regulation entry to ensure that the daily working day was limited to 7.30 a.m.".

As for the Tunisian entity, it works 8 hours a day. However, during Ramadan, this is reduced to 6.30 hours, as in the summer, and then to 8 hours in September.

Closer monitoring of study times and assignments

"Ideally, we'd like to refine our notion of daily/weekly schedules and have the possibility of creating typical time slots assigned to employees or teams. The current advantage with Beebole is that, at a glance, we can see the status of an entry (normal or abnormal) via a green or red color code".

On the other hand, a technician in one team working on windscreens may momentarily be helping out another team working on filtration. The system therefore ends up with inconsistent entries: even though he's part of the windshield team, he has carried out tasks related to filters.

"I now know that Beebole integrates the notion of teams. All you have to do is create two types of team: "person" teams and "project" or "activity" teams. Two different columns appear in Beebole, allowing you to visualize inter-team movements."

With several years' hindsight, Mr. Sevot measures the time spent filling out a database, and is able to identify time trends in study design, thanks in particular to the non-intrusive meta view provided by groups. This enables him to better plan resources and the number of studies for years to come.

Greater precision

Over the past year, a new governance team has taken on a quality mission and is now cross-checking information: "Beebole enables me to check that hours are actually entered for each stage, so that I can go beyond the declarative. The figures announced on one side must correspond to the reality entered," assures Mr. Sevot. As the system is used by almost 300 people, rigor is essential. Especially as the cost is of course passed on to customers in the price of the documentation they buy.

He explains: "Certain types of study used to require twelve days, a period reduced to 9 days by the previous management. The actual duration was 7 days. However, the preparation steps needed to reduce subsequent errors were not captured. 2 additional days were therefore requested. I make sure they are properly entered in Beebole. In the end, inaccurate entries systematically backfire".

Developments in the operational use of time management

Currently, Mr. Sevot works with a monthly extraction, then creates pivot tables. This enables him to cross-check with other types of tables. For the time being, the process is still a little cumbersome, as these monthly exports of around 5,000 lines to Excel are about to reach their limits. Indeed, Excel itself is not intended to be a database, and in the medium term it will probably be necessary to use an intermediate solution.

However, Beebole offers a dashboard covering a relatively broad spectrum of reporting needs. An add-on, in the form of a small side menu, enables you to retrieve external Google Sheets-type data via a simple click in real time. There's no need to rework data, graphs, vlookups or pivot tables; simply refresh the Beebole data using the appropriate button, avoiding the need to recreate a report each time and the potential loss of information. For the moment, add-ons are only available for the Google world.

Beebole's "plus": quality optimization

"The simplification of day-to-day time management is Beebole's most appreciated feature. Changes are instantly visible.

Philippe Sevot, Head of Quality and Change for the Automotive Division

Initially, the tool was used to budget future studies. Now, it can also be used to check that what is stated in terms of hours is what is actually done, as part of an ongoing quality control process. The operational hindsight of nearly 6 years means that averages become more meaningful and reliable with the influx of data over time.

"The simplification of day-to-day time management is Beebole's most appreciated feature. Changes are instantly visible. We're going to take a closer look at the stopwatch activation feature available in the activity sheet settings, which will enable us to monitor times even more closely," concludes Mr. Sevot. Finally, Infopro Digital is in line with the organizational approach of the European Court of Justice, which is pushing for the use of a single benefits management solution to ensure transparency of working hours and tracking of overtime.