Overview:
In the automotive industry, efficient order-to-delivery processes are pivotal to differentiating, maintaining market position and ensuring customer delight. A bumpy ride in this journey means losing ground to the competition and staying in the slow growth lane. The following story narrates how a leading automobile manufacturer in the UK realised the value of process mining in transforming its sales and delivery experience and partnered with FUTUTROOT to improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Automotive Industry Challenges:
At the crossroads of geopolitical conflicts, climatic uncertainties and other disruptions, today, the automotive industry faces unprecedented challenges. A significant part of it entails managing complex supply chains, often spanning multiple geographies, balancing customisation demands with production efficiency and meeting evolving Gen Z customer expectations for faster deliveries with convenience.
Therefore, modern automotive manufacturing systems must be geared to navigate intricate production schedules with high agility while maintaining quality standards and managing costs effectively. Undoubtedly, granular process visibility and control are essential ingredients to bring this recipe to life to delight customers!
Process Challenges for The Client:
In the face of the mounting competitive pressure and variations in demand, the company’s performance dwindled, with extended order-to-delivery timelines, averaging six months from order confirmation to vehicle delivery. While the causes behind this delay are not entirely out of tune with the broader challenges that permeated elsewhere in the industry, they were amplified by coordinating issues deeply entrenched in the processes of the automotive business.
For instance, the lack of reliable visibility into the as-is processes and existing bottlenecks made it impossible for the production teams to implement targeted improvements. It cumulatively slowed down processes, throwing a spanner into the production and delivery schedules and severely impacting the revenue!
The FUTUROOT Advantage:
The company’s leadership decided to pull process optimisation as a lever to turn things around. It reached out to Team FUTUROOT with the project mandate of transforming its order-to-delivery pipeline with deeper insights and actionable recommendations based on actuals rather than assumptions. The primary objectives were identifying bottlenecks, streamlining operations, and reducing delivery times while maintaining product quality and customer satisfaction.
The Implementation Journey:
FUTUROOT’s team kicked off the engagement with a detailed analysis that factored in the client’s three years’ worth of sales, production, and logistics data. The process deep-dive made startling revelations! The team found that 40% of delays originated from misalignment between sales and production teams- a cause that is bound to throw any delivery mechanism off gear sooner or later. FUTUROOT’s analysis also identified several manual approval and customisation processes lurking across the value chain, contributing to lags and delivery delays. To address these entrenched inefficiencies, the team implemented a continuous improvement framework with bi-monthly reporting and specific recommendations for process optimisation.
Business Value Delivered:
FUTUROOT’s process mining solution transformed the company’s order-to-delivery processes
45%
reduction in order-to-delivery time
30%
decrease in production costs
35%
improvement in customer satisfaction scores
Additional benefits included
Enhanced order tracking and communication
Streamlined approval processes reducing manual interventions
Improved sales and production team coordination
Faster & reliable decision-making
FUTUROOT’s 18-month engagement delivered on scope and gave the automobile manufacturer a robust foundation of continuous process improvement with obvious positive dividends. It brought to the fore an essential lesson for automobile manufacturing planners. Reliable process mining is crucial for meaningfully guiding digital transformation, optimising complex manufacturing operations and enhancing customer satisfaction in the automotive industry.