In the field of industrial automation, many companies are faced with the dilemma of losing projects and struggling to break through in performance.
After half a year of follow-up on the large-scale project, it all came to nothing. After review, it was discovered that it was not that the competitors were stronger, but that the various departments within the company were out of touch and constraining each other.
This situation has long been commonplace in the automation industry.
Zhuohan Consulting has long tracked and surveyed the project data of major equipment companies and concluded that the root cause of the loss of more than 60% of projects in the automation field is not external competing products grabbing orders, but internal collaboration faults – sales make arbitrary promises to the outside world, technical teams are unable to implement, production and delivery rhythms are out of touch, and there are loopholes in the entire business link.
Several industry research institutions estimate that the overall domestic industrial automation market size can reach 250 to 350 billion yuan. However, most equipment companies have difficulty breaking through performance bottlenecks. The core resistance restricting development is not in the external market, but hidden within the company.
The sales director of an automation equipment company shared a real project case: last year, the company followed up a project worth 1,500
Wan’s whole plant automation transformation production line project, the sales staff communicated smoothly with the customer’s technical department in the early stage, and the plan issued was in line with the customer’s production process, and the bidding advantage was very obvious.
However, when entering the formal bidding process, multiple internal conflicts broke out: In order to quickly promote cooperation, sales promised customers to complete the overall delivery within 6 months, but after the technical team fully calculated the construction period, it was determined that the shortest delivery period was at least 9 months; when sales reported external procurement quotations, the supply chain department reported that the procurement cost of core components could not support the price; during the project winning preparation stage, the production workshop reported that the delivery of design drawings was lagging, and various parts were not fully stocked, so the overall schedule could only continue to be delayed.
The customer could not accept indefinite waiting and eventually terminated all cooperation.
Similar cases abound in the non-standard automation industry.
Automation projects involve the five core departments of sales, technology, project management, procurement, and production, from business opportunity exploration, solution docking, bidding and quotation to production debugging and on-site delivery. If any link is broken, it will lead to serious consequences such as lost orders, delayed delivery, and customer claims.
Compared with external market competition, conflicts between various positions and departments within the company are the most difficult and fatal problems for non-standard equipment companies to solve.
There are four typical internal synergy contradictions in non-standard projects.
First, sales and technical cognition are separated, and demand transmission is seriously distorted.
Most of the needs of automation customers are macroscopic and emotional. The sales staff directly bring the general needs back to the company, and the technical staff cannot accurately dismantle the implementation standards after receiving the information.
In order to increase the probability of winning the bid, some salesmen easily made promises that exceeded the company’s technical carrying capacity and delivery capabilities. After taking over, the technical team could only repeatedly adjust the plan and overturn the original design.
Second, the technical design is out of touch with on-site production, making it difficult to implement the drawings.
Non-standard automation equipment generally adopts a model of design, research and development, and production at the same time. The technical drawings are logically complete on paper, but problems such as process defects and insufficient parts matching frequently occur during production.
Third, sales only focus on contract signing, and the project is burdened with a large number of inferior orders.
Many automation companies lack a standardized project review process. Sales staff only aim to sign contracts and get commissions, and they accept all projects regardless of the level of profit or delivery risk.
Fourth, each department only focuses on its own links, and management lags behind in decision-making.
The information of each department is isolated, and each position only focuses on its own work, lacking an overall perspective; the management can only rely on lagging reports to understand the project situation, and decision-making and review are all based on subjective impressions.
Faced with the problem of chaotic department coordination, most companies will adopt three types of conventional rectification methods, but the implementation results are generally less than expected.
Simply launching the CRM and ERP management system only treats the symptoms but not the root cause; improving the written SOP process is difficult to implement in practice; organizing cross-department coordination meetings on a regular basis only vents emotions without solutions.
The fundamental crux is that there is no unified communication and analysis framework within the enterprise. Each department has completely different standards for viewing projects and interpreting customers. Naturally, everyone has their own opinions in communication, and consensus cannot be reached.
Zhuohan Consulting has served a number of automation companies and concluded a set of feasible solutions after implementation: If you want to completely resolve internal collaboration and friction, you cannot just rely on tools and processes, but also need a unified customer analysis methodology and standardized project combat mechanism.
Establish a sales + technology + delivery “project iron triangle” combat unit. The three major roles have synchronized information, unified goals, and coordinated actions.
Use PPVVC to unify customer analysis language and eliminate departmental communication barriers.
The key nodes of the project are forced to be aligned with the signatures of the three parties, which can effectively reduce later problems.
A manufacturing company in East China that specializes in non-standard automation equipment and has an annual revenue of 300 million. After introducing the PPVVC analysis methodology and the project iron triangle control system, the one-time pass rate of the plan increased from 45% to 78%, the overall project delivery cycle was shortened by 22%, and the number of cross-department coordination meetings dropped by 60%.
Each department no longer insists on its own opinions and promotes projects based on the same set of customer analysis standards, which greatly reduces internal friction.
There are corresponding answers to the questions you may encounter when implementing the iron triangle model, such as whether it will lengthen the pace of early project advancement, whether it is suitable for small enterprises, and how to resolve conflicts among technical teams.
In short, project competition and internal collaboration and internal friction in the automation industry are hidden and fatal costs that restrict the growth of enterprise scale.
Enterprises should find the root causes of internal friction and implement supporting standardized mechanisms in order to truly break through the bottleneck of performance growth.
