Success Story:
Global Manufacturer
This global manufacturer plans its R&D workforce six quarters ahead. Here’s how.
Note to readers: This is a real story about a real manufacturer, but we’re not using their real name. For the purposes of this story, we’ll call them Company Z.
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Years ago if more scientists were needed to develop a new product at Company Z, they’d simply hire more.
At that time, Company Z was a multi-billion-dollar organization—one of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers—and they were filling a niche no one else was.
Hiring costs were an issue, but the bigger priority was to get the job done.
As competition heated up though, Company Z needed more discipline around how talent was allocated. They needed to make sure they’d always have the right people available for the right projects at the right time.
“Given the product portfolio we’re betting on, do we have the organization in place to execute against it?”
Executive VP of Research & Development for Company Z
It was a challenging proposition.
At any given time, Company Z has over 150 new products in development with their R&D organization. Each product goes through dozens of phases of testing, revisions, and approval, and it can take three to seven years for any one of them to move from concept to market.
Thousands of scientists, engineers, and R&D specialists are working on those products, and their skillsets shift in and out of demand throughout that multi-year cycle—so figuring out how to make sure the right talent will be available eight months from now, when one product will need it, and also 15 months from now, when another one will, is not easy.
In fact, without the RPM solution from Milestone Consulting Group, it’s nearly impossible.
Most resource management tools don’t address this long-term view.
For Company Z, the typical time-tracking practices weren’t going to solve their resource management challenges.
“They needed to know a lot more than who was working on what,” says Brandon Thornton, the resource alignment specialist who helped develop RPM.
“Company Z’s leaders needed to make forward-looking decisions about who to hire (and when), who to reallocate, and where to invest,” he says. “They needed to make sure those decisions aligned with the company’s priorities. And they needed to be able to adjust on the fly, as external factors, like regulatory approvals, impacted timelines.”
“They needed to know a lot more than who was working on what.”
Brandon Thornton, Resource Alignment Expert
RPM made it possible.
Once Brandon and the team from Milestone Consulting Group became aware of Company Z’s needs, they recommended RPM and, within months of implementing it, RPM was already transforming the way they worked.
Now, instead of basing their business decisions on rough estimates that are hard to validate, RPM gives the leaders at Company Z a clear way to forecast and meet their staffing needs.
Essentially, here’s how it works:
- Company Z’s project leaders use RPM to forecast which resources and skills will be required for each new product—and when in the product’s lifecycle they will be needed. They keep these projections updated for the coming six quarters.
- The company’s resource leaders then use RPM to evaluate those projections and determine who can be committed to the upcoming portfolio.
- At that point, RPM exposes where there are gaps. Company Z is able to see—well in advance—when the projected demand for resources will exceed available capacity, and instead of scrambling to hire for skills that were needed “yesterday”, they can plan ahead and hire for positions they’ll need over the coming 18 months.
“Every one of these things used to be a reactive decision for Company Z. Now they’re planned months ahead.”
Brandon Thornton, Resource Alignment Expert
RPM has improved resource allocation significantly:
Instead of having a critical position sit empty for months while leaders scramble to hire, Company Z uses RPM to plan headcount and get people in place well before they’re needed.
RPM has also improved portfolio investment decisions.
Instead of continuing to fund product developments that no longer make sense, portfolio leaders can use RPM to see—months in advance—exactly what resources it’s going to require to finish each product, and then determine which ones are still worth pursuing.
It was the solution they didn’t realize they needed.
Once Company Z put RPM in place, they began to benefit from a single long-range planning process that delivered value every step of the way, from planning their product portfolio to managing resource demand and workforce capacity to staffing strategy and even financial forecasting.
“For a company as complex as Company Z” says Brandon, “RPM was the only tool that could keep up.”
