Interview Story - Process Improvement

When I was at Wistron in my last position as a Supply Chain Manager for the Ecobee account, the boards (PCBAs) were manufactured in a Wistron factory in China and the finished good was assembled and packed in a Taiwan factory. The China factory was set up mostly for mass production products, high volumes with stable design, not for new product launches and prototype production. New product prototype builds require many component changes in the bill of materials, close monitoring, fast reaction, and good communication between many departments.

Ecobee was planning to launch and implement additional 5 new products almost simultaneously in 2019, with very close timelines between launches. The customer was in Canada. Due to the difference in time zone, communication in real-time was much harder. Additionally, the China team’s limited experience on new product launches was a major concern. It was unclear whether we could handle the amount of the work and information on many changes and multiple prototype builds.

I needed to both manage the rollout of these 5 new products and help the Chinese factory change its approach, so we could successfully launch these products.

After talking to each department, I developed a project plan for the new launches. I included in the plan the responsibilities and accountabilities assigned to each department, the people in charge of the project tasks, and times allocated to each process step and task. After each department agreed with the timelines and tasks, I sent the plan to management to approve and get support for the implementation and allocation of 5 additional resources: 1 R&D Engineer, 1 PCC analyst, 1 NPI Buyer to coordinate with the team, 1 EE Sourcer to coordinate with the team and 1 Mechanical Sourcer.

I designed a communication process flow to collect and pass information back and forth between customer Engineering and Design teams located in Canada and different Wistron departments located in Taiwan and China. This focused on information for: Configuration, Sourcing, R&D, Component Engineering, and factory Purchasing and Planning.

In order to consolidate all the information in one place, avoid hundreds of emails going back and forth and monitor the progress and history, I created an Excel file called “NPI Tracker”.

The NPI Tracker included weekly updates when the customer approved components, when Wistron can order and how much, days when suppliers were informed about approvals, and what was the purchase order status. I marked the timelines and milestones when parts had to be approved by the customer in order to avoid Purchase Orders release delays, follow component lead times and avoid shortages for prototype builds.

I had organized weekly conference calls internally within Wistron and externally with Ecobee in order to discuss the assigned actions and tasks, any escalations if necessary, and review weekly the material tracker for each project. After each call, I sent the summary with notes and assigned actions from the call, including the NPI Tracker file updated to all parties. I followed up during the week on the tasks assigned to make sure they were closed and updated the progress for the following week’s review.

From the 5 NPI projects started simultaneously, 2 have been launched successfully, both were in mass production on time, and 3 were ongoing when I left the company.