Product Development Process Improvement using Stages

With the significant transformations in the global automotive industry, cost reduction and efficiency improvement have become major challenges for every company. Lean, extremely efficient processes and flexible, agile structures become top priority. Process optimization and simplification holds a crucial role in this context. In our complex and extensive process house framework, the PEP (Product Development Process) serves as the starting point, as it directly influences quality, cost, and time.

PEP encompasses all stages of product development. It has grown over several decades, been applied in nearly 400 projects in our Business Unit, and is closely connected with other processes, such as design and development, logistics, production, etc. Additionally, our PEP has demonstrated its value in collaboration with traditional international manufacturers, while Asian manufacturers, who demand incredible speed and agility, are steadily gaining global market share. How can we standardize and fulfill all these demands?

After setting up process improvement initiatives in our organization, we are fortunate to have received support from all levels, from management to national and international project teams. Additionally, we are lucky to be able to implement and pilot our improvements incrementally with an agile speed and approach.

STAGES Tool is a key enabler in achieving our goal, as nearly almost all our ideas are implemented, demonstrated, reviewed, released, published and rolled-out in Stages. It has been established in our company for ten years, we have the opportunity to not only maintain but also reengineer our process architecture, not only inherit but also rebuild our process models, and extend variants with the aim of increase the productivity of project teams, responsiveness to OEMs and the company’s ROI.

We benefit from the following key features of Stages: -Workspace Collection and workspace Group, -Tailoring Assistant and manual Tailoring, -Find Detail in, – Metrics and reports, – On Demand – User group and Participant -Core process update and copy -Process Automation -Reference Model … Experimenting and implementing by leveraging all these features is an incredibly exciting journey. We will share our experiences and discoveries in using these features to achieve our high-demanding goals.

Short biography

Zheng Zhu is a seasoned professional in process management. Since October 2024, she is working as a PEP Lead, excelling in aligning product engineering processes with strategic business objectives.

Her previous roles include serving as a Process Architect and Process Designer, where she developed efficient workflows to enhance organizational performance, and as a Process Management Consultant, focusing on test management processes. Zheng started her career as a Software Tester (2011–2014), gaining expertise in quality assurance for medical devices.