A planning board not everyone could reach.
The board worked, but only for the people in the room.
A global Swedish truck manufacturer ran its order and production planning on manual, physical planning boards. The in-person meetings around them built trust and a shared feel for the production flow, but not everyone could attend, and sales staff in particular were often unable to take part.
As attendance fell, the meetings lost their pull. Communication between departments deteriorated, delivery to customers grew harder, and quality and lead times suffered.
We kept what made the board work, and made it digital.
We worked from two principles: understand the customer's viewpoint, and keep sight of the whole and its details. A simple digitalization would have lost the visual, tactile method that made the board valuable, so that was the thing to protect.
Working on site, continuously, we developed a more tactile and visual digital planning board, built on well-known, established and widespread methods and connected to the existing IT infrastructure to keep administration low.
Everyone in the room, wherever they are.
The real-time digital board let everyone take part regardless of where they sat, while keeping the direct, hands-on planning approach. Presence and involvement in planning went up, administration stayed low, and productivity increased with precision and efficiency maintained.
