The automotive industry faces the challenge of balancing sustainability, digitalization, and a shortage of skilled workers, while at the same time reducing non-value-added activities. Through an innovative value stream analysis, this project achieved significant efficiency gains—a crucial step toward establishing sustainable structures and processes in an OEM’s supply chain.
Problem Statement
OEMs are increasingly having to address future-oriented issues such as sustainability, digitalization, and AI. At the same time, in light of the shortage of skilled workers, the automotive industry must deliver high quality and performance by reducing non-value-added activities. Today’s organizational structures and processes cannot keep pace with the rapidly evolving world and must become more efficient to enable future-oriented work.
Solution approach
The first stage of the “value stream analysis” process enables the identification of all value contributions across the entire department, including a breakdown of the capacities utilized (across departments). From this, hypotheses regarding efficiency potential can be derived. In the second step, efficiency potentials are developed together with the employees involved using a standardized process and systematic assessment of seven levers. This approach increases buy-in within the organization and ensures the sustainability of the measures developed. Particular attention was paid to ensuring that these measures have an end-to-end impact and that all actions are consolidated.
Results
The project identified and implemented significant efficiency gains. Specifically, these were achieved in the areas of digitization, role segmentation, reduction of meeting and reporting workloads, and other specific measures. The focus on work products played a decisive role in this: by consistently focusing on end-to-end (E2E) work products, high-impact measures could be specifically identified and implemented.
Overall, the OEM’s supply chain achieved a 5% efficiency gain in areas related to future initiatives, and outsourcing enabled an additional 15% efficiency gain. Two key success factors were cross-functional collaboration and the rigorous data management used to track and make transparent the efficiency potential from concept to implementation.
