Case Study
Procter & Gamble creates a collaborative community
Procter & Gamble
Teamcenter lifecycle collaboration technology offers a quick, cost-effective way to extend the reach of product knowledge to the consumer product giant’s entire enterprise and huge supplier base
- To optimize the effectiveness of distributed product development teams, Procter & Gamble needed a collaborative strategy that included everyone.
A geographically dispersed giant
Procter & Gamble (P&G) is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer packaged goods. The company markets nearly 300 brands to approximately five billion consumers in more than 160 countries. To address the needs of its worldwide customer base, P&G employs a widely distributed product development strategy. P&G employees at the Cincinnati headquarters collaborate with other P&G personnel and suppliers located all over the world. Their goal: cost effectively create innovative products to improve the lives of consumers globally and introduce them to the market ahead of the competition.
Key to making a distributed development strategy successful is a collaboration environment that includes all players. This was difficult to achieve in the past. Although the standard corporate desktop environment included some collaborative tools, it did not support easy sharing of 3D visual product data. Yet this type of data – product and package models, label artwork, equipment, analysis and layout diagrams, process schematics and so on – are vital elements of P&G’s design process. Although P&G had implemented ways to facilitate the sharing of this information among those who created it, the company also needed a broader solution, one that would bring visual product data to every desktop.
A solution for visual collaboration
P&G found the solution in Teamcenter’s lifecycle collaboration environment. This Microsoft SharePoint-based technology leveraged P&G’s existing Microsoft-based IT infrastructure, making it possible to deploy the solution easily and cost effectively. Teamcenter provided P&G with capabilities specifically tailored to product-related team collaboration, including robust visualization capabilities for visual collaboration in a CAD-neutral format. It also brought P&G a rich set of real-time collaboration services, including calendars, schedules, workflow, virtual meeting sites, instant messaging and virtual conferencing.
By implementing Teamcenter as part of the Microsoft environment, P&G provides access to product knowledge (including graphical elements) to employees and suppliers without making them leave the familiar Microsoft work environment. This lets more people participate in product lifecycle processes. In addition, Teamcenter permits customized views of product information, so that team members see exactly the information they need in the format that is most useful to them. For example, someone from purchasing would have a different view of product information than a person in marketing, and a supplier would see something different as well.
Capabilities no other solution provides
Initial pilot deployments of Teamcenter, involving several of the company’s business units (Baby Care and Family Care), convinced P&G of the value of this IT-friendly approach to collaboration. One of the early benefits noted was the ability to share a variety of design files, including CAE (Abaqus) and industrial design (Maya) models, in global collaboration sessions. This had not been possible previously with standard collaboration software. “Teamcenter gives us the capability to share applications, models and results both inside and outside P&G,” says Brad Whitmore, in Baby Care Computer Aided Engineering. “No other collaboration tools have successfully provided this capability.”
P&G initiated its use of Teamcenter’s lifecycle collaboration solution in the area of manufacturing equipment design and product packaging. The software is used to permit global team collaboration, allowing distributed team members to evaluate different concepts by viewing digital prototypes in real-time product reviews.
With the Teamcenter lifecycle collaboration solution, P&G gained a way to share information across the many firewalls, geographies, time zones and systems that comprise its distributed product development strategy. P&G plans a broad deployment of Teamcenter to over 10,000 internal users and partners. The company expects clear bottom-line benefits to follow. Enhanced collaboration will drive innovation. The ability to innovate more effectively, particularly in the early design phase, will speed time-to-market and cut costs.
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Challenges:
- Support innovation among geographically dispersed development teams
- Speed time-to-market and reduce costs
- Provide virtual 3D design reviews
Keys To Success:
- Incorporate Teamcenter® lifecycle collaboration technology into desktop software environment
- Use Teamcenter for visual product collaboration among employees and suppliers
Results:
- Access to product information available from the desktop
- Enhanced collaboration driving innovation
- Faster product packaging, process and plant design shrinking time-to-market and costs
Industry:
- Consumer Products
Client's Primary Business:
Procter & Gamble is a multi-national manufacturer of family, personal and household care products.
Business Initiatives:
- Production Efficiency
- Value Chain Synchronization
Solutions/Services:
- Teamcenter
Client Location:
Cincinnati, Ohio
United States
"Teamcenter gives us the capability to share applications, models and results both inside and outside P&G. No other collaboration tools have successfully provided this capability."
Brad Whitmore
Baby Care Computer Aided Engineering
Procter & Gamble