NXP®: Driving Smarter Product Development and Manufacturing Through Centralized PPM

Company Overview

NXP® Semiconductors enables secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world, advancing solutions that make lives easier, better, and safer. As the world leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, NXP is driving innovation in the secure connected vehicle, end-to-end security, and privacy and smart/IoT connected solutions markets.

Initiative Overview

NXP’s PPM modernization began in 2014, at Freescale Semiconductor, shortly before the merger of the companies. At the time, different tools were in use within various business lines and functions to handle project management tasks. These included Primavera, Microsoft Project, Project Enterprise, Enovia Projects, and SPaRC/Dassault. The planned obsolescence by Oracle of the Primavera system, precipitated the search for a new platform capable of replacing existing tools and serving as a single, centralized system of record.

For this to be possible, the tool needed to meet the diverse maturity levels and needs of the business lines for integrated project scheduling/ tracking, resource management, and portfolio analysis. And at the executive and corporate PMO level, the system needed to provide crossorganization visibility to technology development and manufacturing lifecycle dependencies and spend information. During the tool evaluations, Freescale Semiconductor found Sciforma.

In 2015, the Freescale Semiconductor-NXP merger event amplified the need for a single solution that could facilitate the integration of the combined organization’s business lines and processes. Sciforma’s ability to connect the business through better cross-functional collaboration and project/product roadmap visibility came to be viewed as a source of competitive advantage.

Business Drivers and Requirements

Visibility to R&D Spend

• Push-button ability to generate financial reports and prepare for portfolio reviews
• Ability to perform rapid and frequent budget/cost analysis, resource scheduling, and capacity scenario planning

Interlinking Technology and Product Development

• Cross-product portfolio analysis and top-down roadmap visibility (not possible with standalone/siloed project planning tools)
• Ability to connect projects in order to facilitate more synergistic technology development, manufacturing, and product lifecycle management

Adaptability of Tool to Diverse Lines of Business and Workforce & Integrated Enterprise Solution

• Robust array of PPM functionality that can be configured and customized to meet unique departmental needs and maturity levels
• Ability to support a federated PMO model with a centralized planning function and 10 participating lines of business

Integrated Enterprise Solution

• Centralized application for standardizing project business cases, project lifecycle management (gates, checklists, deliverables, work items, schedules and status reporting) and resource planning
• Ability of project portfolios to be reviewed/adjusted to drive staffing plans based on business conditions leveraging the latest information with minimal effort to generate reports

Sciforma Solution

Software Critical Capabilities

• Idea and Demand Management
• Resource & Capacity Planning
• Project Planning and Management
• Program & Portfolio Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Work & Collaboration

Technical Choices

• Cloud: Limited or no customizations, easy to upgrade and stay current
• Integrations: HR resources and reporting structure database (previously PPM resource data was manually maintained), Financial/ERP system for project costing and allocation.
• Scalability and performance: Network response and global performance and availability critical for user satisfaction

Services

• Admin training,
• Implementation and integration

Expected/Realized Benefits & Next Steps

Faster Reporting and Higher Quality Decision Making

What used to take up to 10 weeks to perform data collection, aggregation and consolidation now takes 20 minutes. That time is now spent on analyzing and decision making. Moreover, the quality of and confidence in decisions in areas like capacity planning and portfolio analytics has increased due to the reliability and consistency of the centralized data leveraged by the analytic tool.

Improved Financial Management

NXP is able to gather actual resource utilization from project timesheets, feed that information to the financial system and facilitate tax credits, subsidies, and IFRS capitalization through automation.

Better Resource Planning

NXP has experienced better visibility to portfolio staffing needs and gaps through the ability to easily gather resource project allocations and project needs and feed them into the reporting solution. Integration with HR systems ensures synchronization of resource information records and better alignment of onboard/offboard resources.