[Case study] A PMO's recipe for optimizing industrial project development cycles

When serving customers in industries such as aerospace, energy and defense, on-time delivery is crucial. Aubert & Duval knows all about this. The French metallurgist develops high-performance steels for the design of complex, custom-made parts for companies operating in critical sectors.

The company was therefore keen to improve its control over the design and manufacturing cycles of its products. It did so by adopting Sciforma's project portfolio management software.

In this interview with Arnaud Montels, Head of Aubert & Duval's Project Management Office (PMO), we take a look back at this successful initiative and introduce you to this PPM tool.

See all software Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

What initially led you to equip yourself with a project management tool?

Arnaud Montels:

In a nutshell, we wanted to improve our efficiency and customer satisfaction by optimizing our product development projects.

Major challenges

Typically, our design projects last several months, and require substantial initial investment. For example, we have to order several tons of superalloys, which can be traded at around 60 euros a kilo: do the math!

What's more, the parts our customers expect from us are of a critical nature. They include landing gear, for example, and other components essential to the construction of an aircraft. Any delay will affect our customers and dent their satisfaction, which is of course our top priority.

All this to say that we have no room for error. With so much at stake, it's essential to run our projects as efficiently as possible, and to keep our commitments to the letter.

A problem of load/capacity matching

In the past, we didn't have the means to ensure perfect control of our production cycles, mainly because we found it hard to see clearly. Each team tracked its projects in Excel, but we had no consolidated visibility of current and future workloads. Having a global vision was all the more complicated as our design teams are spread over several sites, including one in India, and they carry out projects of different types and nature.

Without knowing and anticipating the load, we couldn't adapt capacity to it. As a result, we often found ourselves with overloaded teams, and sometimes even had to turn down projects because we simply didn't have the manpower to handle them.

The primary objective of acquiring a project management tool was therefore to be able to adapt team capacity to the workload, rather than the other way round.

Another important challenge was to better identify and analyze these workloads in order to better prioritize and improve the management of development cycles.

Sciforma's software offered us answers to these problems. So we adopted the tool and went live in early 2018.

Has the tool lived up to its promise? What have you gained from deploying Sciforma?

Arnaud Montels:

The key word: visibility.

First and foremost, the tool has given us a central database in which all our data is automatically consolidated, in real time. No need to juggle between several Excel files, everything is in the same place. No more worries about data reliability, since automation eliminates the risk of error.

We now have an overall view of our current projects: we know clearly what phase of development each project is in.

And we also know where we're going. The software immediately opened up new visibility on our forecasted workload. As soon as a project is created, the design team selects from a library a pre-prepared schedule model with milestones and generic loads.

Illustration Sciforma 7.1 - Example of a roadmap.

Then, throughout the life of the project, changes in actual versus forecast workload are tracked, weighted and analyzed along several axes (by project type, by phase, etc.). This enables us to refine our models and forecasts over time.

Above all, all this information, for each of our projects, is reflected in real time on a single workload plan, consolidated at team level. As a result, we now have 18-month global visibility on the future workload of our design teams, enabling us to forecast the capacity required, and anticipate the need to hire new staff.

Illustration Sciforma 7.1 - Project Planning Center.

Moreover, the transparency offered by the tool enabled us to demonstrate to our management the overload of our teams, which have since been reinforced by a total of 26 new recruits. Sciforma gives us the resources we need to fulfill our mission and work efficiently.

One for all, all for one

Greater efficiency, therefore, both collectively and individually. Users now enter their time spent in Sciforma, which has enabled us to identify and analyze inertia and sources of wasted time... and to remedy them!

For example, we have set up a specific home screen, showing each project manager an overview of his or her current projects and associated indicators, classified by status, type, etc. This interface, which met the expectations of our teams, generated real productivity gains, while making work more comfortable.

Illustration image Sciforma 7.1 - Custom Space screen: work item.

All this has also helped to standardize and improve project management practices. Of course, we have teams of professional project managers, but other user profiles also contribute to projects. As a result, not everyone was at the same level when it came to project management, and different ways of working coexisted as best they could.

The introduction of Sciforma provides an ideal opportunity to review methodologies and institutionalize shared practices. We haven't yet reached overall project management maturity, but the deployment of Sciforma is making a major contribution.

Our customers rely on our company to produce critical parts for their own business. As PMO, our responsibility is to ensure that our projects are managed in such a way as to deliver the highest quality products, on time. And that's what Sciforma helps us guarantee.

As head of the PMO, what role did you play in the deployment of Sciforma at Aubert & Duval?

Arnaud Montels:

Well, the PMO initiated and steered the initiative from start to finish, and we continue to bring the solution to life on a daily basis.

The PMO: a multi-faceted function

A PMO is more than just a control tower to punish breaches of procedure. At Aubert & Duval, we wanted an active PMO. The PMO reports directly to the Industrial Development Department, making it a cross-functional position that acts as a bridge between the different teams, as well as between decision-makers and the field.

Illustration Sciforma 7.1 - Project portfolio view with health index.

While our PMO is responsible for implementing the methodology and overseeing project progress, it also plays a host of other important roles.

For management, the PMO is the guarantor of data quality and integrity; it provides the relevant indicators, can guide decision-making, and helps select or prioritize projects to implement the strategy.

For users, the PMO must also play the role of advisor, coach and companion, listening to their needs so as to be able to respond by developing or adapting the appropriate functionalities or procedures .

The importance of long-term support

As part of the Sciforma deployment, the technical configuration of the tool represented only a small part of our work. It was essentially the management of change within a community of multi-site, multi-trade engineering teams that mobilized our energies.

For this, we relied on Sciforma's teams, and on those of their certified partner ASI, with whom we had ourselves established a long-term partnership.

These external experts were on hand to support the PMO in responding to users' needs and questions, and to train and inform project managers. And they continue to support us over the long term to help us develop both our methods and the software, with a view to continuous improvement. Sciforma's functional modularity, which lends itself to specific parameterization, is a big plus in this respect.

See all software Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

The Aubert & Duval story in a nutshell

To serve their customers well and create value, a growing number of companies and organizations need to ensure that their project management is optimized. This is true for the design and development of new products, especially in complex markets, but it is also true for all economic players, whatever their size or sector of activity. When it comes to optimizing value creation and ROI, project management represents a formidable lever for improvement.

This is where the role of the PMO, or project management manager, becomes critical. While a tool is not everything, it is becoming increasingly important for the PMO to be able to rely on a robust, tailored software solution, which will help it to fully play its structuring and facilitating role, and enable it to accelerate and improve projects to better serve the company's strategy.

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