Business process re-engineering for ETO companies downgrading project management methodologies : Bosch Rexroth case

When talking about project management is expected to refer to big EPC contractors that manages very big and highly complex projects. Nevertheless, nowadays, the need of a system of project management (PM) is spreading also in Engineer-to-Order companies; in fact, more and more clients today want customized products, built with high professional standards and delivered promptly. To meet these expectations, manufacturing industries need to make products with a high degree of flexibility and manage the entire process from the order to the development, up to production and delivery. Hence, the need of downgrading of classical project management methodologies for these types of firm where in many cases the role of Project Manager is not exploited since only pure technical figures are designated to manage order realization. Starting from this idea, compared with an initial investigation in what literature says about the possibility of implementing and adopting project management methods and tools for ETO companies, I decided to go explore the topic with a fieldwork. I went to Bosch Rexroth S.p.A., one of the leading specialists in driving and controlling technologies, which had already begun the application of this type of “reduced” project management system and went to investigate and quantify, in differential form, the company's performance before and after introduction of formalized PM tools in the company. In Bosch Rexroth case, it is like a mixture of Project Management and Lean Management since Kanban tool is one of those used for monitoring activities. The work done has resulted in a procedural work consisting in the creation of a new workflow with the process formalization, integration activities, role descriptions and time and cost monitoring. Moreover, I have analyzed numerical data and the results show an improvement in the efficiency of the work process, which leads to the reduction of delayed activity and related costs. This downgrading, conceived as a Business Process Re-Engineering, could be consider as a proposal for all small and medium companies that think do not need this type framework for the order management, which bring benefits in terms of time and cost.