May, 2012

Looking back to a successful seminar on
“Portfolio-Wide Resource Planning”

On May 23, ISC and Bluegrass Consulting co-organized, in Brussels, a seminar about “Portfolio Wide Resource Planning” with presentations from Bridgestone Europe, Lundbeck, PlanningForce and Bluegrass Consulting.

Attendees were in vast majority PLM or ePMO managers from companies headquartered in Brussels.

Our four speakers developed the following topics:

Geert Vanhove, Partner at Bluegrass Consulting

Made a presentation about the four levers to project and service level excellence; amongst other topics covered, he developed a strategy map for process and service level excellence.

Niek Vaessen, General Manager at Bridgestone Europe

Presented how BSEU successfully tackled its planning & scheduling challenges by implementing PlanningForce in the area of their product development.

Frederic Dufour, CEO of ISC

Presented the new PlanningForce.0, its planning landscape and organizational solution; he also stressed the importance of considering resources at the same level as project when it comes to optimize the project portfolio planning.

Morten Kall, Head of the Bio-Analysis team at Lundbeck

Explained how PlanningForce helps planning technicians and lab assets boosting the throughput in their R&D labs and getting visibility on demand to improve their operational agility.

The presentations were followed by a discussion panel and a survey conducted amongst the 42 participants.

Two areas were covered in this survey:

A. Maturity and expectations of the PLM / ePMO organization

It clearly appears that the audience was divided into two groups: the mature and not mature PLM / ePMO organizations.

1. Mature organizations stressed the importance of standardizing the processes related to the portfolio-wide resource planning
2. Not mature organizations stressed the importance of improving the quality of the outputs coming from the planning system

B.Challenges that face a modern PLM / ePMO organization

The three top challenges faced by a modern PLM / ePMO organizations are:

1. How to manage the resource plan across the portfolio?
2. How to manage the project complexity of the portfolio?
3. How to increase the efficiency of resources (=do more with the same resources)?

Another lesson learned from the survey and comments made by the participants, which can be seen as a conclusion of this seminar, is that improving the resource planning methodology becomes a key success factor in the maturity process of PLM / ePMO organizations, be they large or small.

If you are interested in receiving the minutes of this seminar, as well as the results of the survey, please fill in the info request.