Recently, I was in a customer engagement where I was required to provide a solution to one of the key issues that they were facing. This customer, being in the High Tech business, had frequent needs to actively engage with suppliers for sourcing components.  

In earlier releases, we had a specific solution to work with suppliers. And while there is a plan for a next generation solution to be built on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, it’s not ready yet. So we faced a dilemma with this customer – find an alternative solution or possibly lose to the competition! After getting a good understanding of the customer needs, we realized we could leverage the ENOVIA Project Manager role to meet their needs! It turns out that this role is a great tool for many “non-project” applications as well.

Our first step was to convince the customer to look at every customer interaction as a “Project”.  There are some typical phases in which the interaction between an OEM and the suppliers happen. For example, we have the RFQ phase where the OEM is seeking information from the vendors, the Quotation Phase where the vendors submit their quotations for the scope of work, and then the Decision Gate where the OEM takes a decision on whom to award the work. And then there are phases where the real exchange of work begins between the OEM and the vendor, and finally culminates with the submission of the final product.

We delivered the solution using the ENOVIA Project Manger role. The phase Gate view of the sample project looks like Pic1.

When multiple vendors bid for a project and the OEM has to take a decision, there are specific steps that are followed. First, a ‘check list’ of all the items is prepared. All of the meetings, decisions documentation are recorded and stored for future reference/audit purpose. This is precisely achieved by the Gate object between the Project Phases.

In the real world, the OEM’s decision to select a particular vendor is based on multiple criteria such as 1) price quoted, 2) reputation of the vendor 3) prior history with the vendor 4) speed of delivery 5) location of the vendor, etc…

We pitched in ‘PLM Analytics’ as a tool that can intelligently manage this decision making process for the customer. While we did not deliver this as a part of our demo, we were able to convey the ability of the platform to deliver such aspects.  This perked up lots of eagerness with the customers..

Now, regarding the aspect of communicating the decision with the vendors, we configured the system to be able to create routes that delivered task notifications to the selected vendors. Take a look at the Picture 2A and 2B that has a sample workflow to the vendors.

For the day to day exchange activity between the OEM and Supplier, we showed how the WBS tasks can be leveraged. We developed the task structure as per the customer’s feedback  ( Pic 3 below)

We communicated the power of the tool that can track the task progress, delivery of the work/data against deadlines, slippage,late completions etc.. the Power of ‘Invisible Governance’ .

The audience felt this was a great solution that can solve their problem!

We are making good progress with this customer and are scheduled to meet again with a bigger team and the scope is even bigger!

Hope this blog helps other folks out there who may be wondering what solution to pitch in for a sourcing problem.

Please contact me if you want additional information.