New Pro­ject Manage­ment at Hack Formenbau

Hack For­men­bau is an injec­tion mol­ding com­pa­ny that spe­cia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­tu­re of high-qua­li­ty molds. With 180 employees, the com­pa­ny deve­lo­ps pre­cis­i­on molds in the are­as of sin­gle-com­po­nent, mul­ti-com­po­nent and mul­ti-cavi­ty at its Kirch­heim unter Teck site.

Befo­re the intro­duc­tion of the new soft­ware, pro­ject manage­ment at Hack For­men­bau was based on a com­bi­na­ti­on of various MS Office docu­ments such as Word and Excel as well as an ERP sys­tem cal­led Work­plan. This frag­men­ted approach led to chal­lenges in the over­view and manage­ment of pro­jects, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in the plan­ning and track­ing of dead­lines, mile­sto­nes, resour­ces and costs.

The company’s basic requi­re­ments for new pro­ject manage­ment soft­ware included:

  • Over­views of the appro­xi­m­ate­ly 150 ongo­ing projects
  • Manage­ment of dead­lines inclu­ding mile­sto­nes (plan­ned and actu­al data)
  • Detail­ed pro­ject pha­ses and cost control
  • Resour­ce plan­ning, espe­ci­al­ly for non-manu­fac­tu­ring areas
  • Visua­liza­ti­on of the pro­duc­tion areas
  • Crea­ti­on of sta­tus reports: quick and easy to crea­te from a stan­dar­di­zed database
  • Inte­gra­ti­on of exis­ting data from the ERP system
  • Crea­ti­on of sche­du­les based on tem­pla­tes with pro­ject pha­ses and adop­ti­on of data from pro­duc­tion planning

Choo­sing and Cus­to­mi­zing the Pro­ject Software

After a tho­rough com­pa­ri­son of the company’s requi­re­ments with estab­lished sys­tems on the mar­ket, it beca­me clear that the PLANTA soft­ware offe­red a lar­ge over­lap with the requi­red func­tions and eva­lua­tions. In addi­ti­on, the fle­xi­bi­li­ty of PLANTA pro­ject enab­led cus­to­miza­ti­on to meet the customer’s spe­ci­fic needs.

The new soft­ware was intro­du­ced in seve­ral phases: 

  1. Imple­men­ta­ti­on of the requi­re­ments in the test sys­tem: To begin with, the spe­ci­fic requi­re­ments were imple­men­ted in a test sys­tem, inclu­ding the neces­sa­ry inter­faces to exis­ting systems.
  2. Test and opti­miza­ti­on pha­se: This pha­se included exten­si­ve test­ing with key users and opti­miza­ti­ons based on their feedback.
  3. User trai­ning: In order to ensu­re effec­ti­ve use of the new soft­ware, trai­ning cour­ses were held for users.
  4. Go live: In August 2023, the new pro­ject soft­ware was offi­ci­al­ly laun­ched in pro­duc­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on, inclu­ding fur­ther adjus­t­ments based on ongo­ing feedback.

Imple­men­ta­ti­on of the Pro­ject Manage­ment Functions

Over­views and Visualizations

The soft­ware pro­vi­des detail­ed over­views of pro­ject pha­ses and mile­sto­nes. A par­ti­cu­lar focus was on visua­li­zing the pro­duc­tion pro­ces­ses of indi­vi­du­al pro­jects and on ran­king delays to the baseline.

Resour­ce Planning

A cen­tral fea­ture of PLANTA pro­ject is the pool for new pro­jects that are still wit­hout assign­ment. This makes it pos­si­ble to see which pro­jects have not yet been assi­gned to a design engi­neer, for exam­p­le. A detail­ed list of all employees and their assi­gned pro­jects pro­vi­des an over­view of who should have com­ple­ted a pro­ject by what time and should thus be available for the next one.

Sta­tus Reports

The crea­ti­on of sta­tus reports has been auto­ma­ted, with hea­der and base­line data, mas­ter mile­sto­nes, mile­stone trend ana­ly­sis, cost sta­tu­s­es and pay­ment sche­du­les being fil­led in auto­ma­ti­cal­ly. Manu­al ent­ries include the cur­rent sta­tus, next steps and chan­ges to the objec­ti­ves. The­se reports are regu­lar­ly pre­sen­ted to the stee­ring com­mit­tee by the respec­ti­ve pro­ject managers.

Sche­du­les

The crea­ti­on of sche­du­les is based on tem­pla­tes that are available in Ger­man and Eng­lish, whe­re pha­ses and mas­ter mile­sto­nes are defi­ned. Howe­ver, mile­sto­nes and pro­ces­ses can be cus­to­mi­zed. The­re are also spe­cial cus­to­mer sche­du­les with legends in Ger­man or Eng­lish as well as pro­gram schedules.

Posi­ti­ve Impact

The intro­duc­tion of the new soft­ware sys­tem has impro­ved the customer’s pro­ject manage­ment. They can now mana­ge data cen­tral­ly and dis­play them trans­par­ent­ly: Sche­du­les inclu­ding mile­sto­nes, pro­ject over­views, resour­ce plans, sta­tus reports and uti­liza­ti­on over­views. The data from the ERP sys­tem can be inte­gra­ted into PLANTA, and the stan­dar­di­zed data­ba­se ensu­res grea­ter trans­pa­ren­cy. The visua­liza­ti­on of pro­duc­tion pro­ces­ses and auto­ma­ted sta­tus reports con­tri­bu­te to impro­ved decision-making.

Out­look

The fle­xi­ble suite made it pos­si­ble to imple­ment the neces­sa­ry adjus­t­ments with mode­ra­te effort. Adap­ting the soft­ware to the chan­ging needs of the com­pa­ny will remain a key task in the future, as will employee trai­ning. Over­all, the intro­duc­tion of the tool shows how important a well thought-out and fle­xi­bly adap­ta­ble pro­ject manage­ment soft­ware is for the suc­cess of a com­pa­ny in the spe­cia­li­zed mold making sector.