Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
The Engineering department at IDEX Health & Science was spending a lot of time gathering data and only getting a fraction of the data they needed for the effort. AtTask made data gathering automatic, increased their work capacity, and gave them the intelligence to streamline their processes.
Citation preview
ENABLING BETTER PROCESSES How IDEX Health & Science Increased Its Project Capacity By 367%
IDEX Health & Science, LLC
• Industry: Medical Device
• Department: Engineering, Sales, Supply Chain, Quality
• Location: Oak Harbor, WA; Rohnert Park. CA; Middleboro, MA; Bristol, CT
• Employees: 550
• Designs, develops, and manufactures 9 product lines of fluidic subsystems
CUSTOMER BACKGROUND
In early 2008, the IDEX engineering team was tracking their projects in a homegrown tool, shared folders, and email. For an excessive amount of manual work, they got only a fraction of the visibility they needed.
BREAKING POINT
To track down project updates and keep spreadsheets updated, engineers had to spend up to 15% of their time chasing down stakeholders, sitting in meetings, and digging through emails, instead of on their primary engineering tasks.
BREAKING POINT
Despite so much effort, their tool was incapable of delivering even basic visibility. They couldn’t view projects at the portfolio level. Projects were removed accidentally from the spreadsheet or just forgotten.
BREAKING POINT
The tool consumed half of their time for administration and support until finally, the spreadsheet became so complex that it began to crash regularly.
BREAKING POINT
The IDEX engineering team knew they needed to find a professional solution.
BREAKING POINT
“The complexity of what we were trying to do just started sucking up so many resources to administer. Half of our time was spent administering and supporting our home-built tool. That was the final straw for us.” –Kurt Pickle, Vice-President of Engineering
BREAKING POINT
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
As they began looking at project management tools, Microsoft Project Server didn’t have the flexibility or user-friendliness they were looking for and would take extensive training.
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Basecamp, on the other hand, was too basic for the team’s needs.
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
A demo from an AtTask sales rep finally caught their attention.
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AtTask would give them the ability to customize the solution to their various activities, beyond just project management.
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AtTask was intuitive enough that the team would adopt it quickly, but robust enough for the level of data-collection and reporting they hoped to achieve.
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
In May 2008, the IDEX engineering team signed on with AtTask.
“AtTask gave us the ability to do a lot of different activities within it. You could use the functionality for more than just purely project management stuff. It was flexible, and we could adapt it to work for us, rather than trying to conform our business to it.” –Scott Ellis, Director of Engineering, IDEX Health & Science
BEYOND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Initially rolled out with only the engineering team, AtTask began generating the visibility they’d been seeking.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
The team’s managers suddenly had a real-time view into every project and their entire portfolio—how many engineers were on each project, what each team member was working on, completion time for each project.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
By monitoring key points in the product development process in AtTask, they could spot bottlenecks and make data-driven decisions to streamline processes.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Instead of spending time maintaining spreadsheets and chasing updates, the engineering team’s reports were suddenly automated. AtTask also allowed them to increase stakeholder input and hold team members accountable.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
The IDEX team was able to work faster than ever before. The need for meetings decreased. Turnaround time on customer quotes shrank from 14 days to five.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
As AtTask enabled the team to become more mature, their annual project capacity grew from six projects to 28.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
As the success of AtTask grew, so did the team’s license count. Soon, the Supply Chain, Quality, Engineering, and Sales departments were also using AtTask.
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
“Before AtTask, we were getting out about six projects a year. We’ve had two years in a row now with 28 projects completed. AtTask has been a great, big part of that. It’s been a huge enabler in improving our processes.” –Scott Eliis, Director of Engineering
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Summary
ENABLING PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Customer quote turnaround dropped from 14 to 5 days.
Annual project capacity grew by 367%.
AtTask spread from Engineering into six other departments.
