Project Description
Sigma Connectivity AB
Sigma Connectivity AB was founded in 2013, when Sigma acquired Sony Mobile’s world leading unit for development of hardware for mobile units. Therefore the experience in developing mobile units is based on a 30 years long history. Sigma Connectivity has developed advanced products, e.g the new Mobile Xperia smartphone.
Sigma Connectivity is located in the University City Lund, Sweden and has more than 250 employees, the majority being highly educated and specialized engineers.
The customers are global companies which ask for experience and assistance for advanced mobile technology and usability.
Projects
Yearly, Sigma completes about 200 projects, of which most are relatively big projects with duration from 1 to 3 years.
The development projects are often rather unpredictable and have strict demand for quality and timely delivery. All this adds to the complexity.
Before MPI, Sigma Connectivity used a great number of Excel sheets to plan and execute the projects with all the challenges of handling many resources across projects and departments and with long time durations.
MPI is used by 2 more Sigma units, Sigma AB and Sigma IT Management.
“The implementation of Marstrand Planning Intelligence (MPI) was simple and did not require specialist resources or a complex infrastructure. The configuration options work really well and we had MPI up and running in less than a week.
Users are quick to start using the system. Training is given in workshops, 2 to 3 hours per user. MPI has many good features for configuration in order to meet the precise way you work. It is easy to set up reports and information is presented WYSIWYG. Information from the ERP system is easy to integrate and the need for support after the initial implementation phase was low, but when needed questions are answered competently and quickly”
Resource management with MPI
Effective resource management is essential for Sigma Connectivity to assure a good economy and to provide employees with realistic and motivating schedules.
The employees are grouped according to competences, so called budget resource groups. Project managers start with a high level planning of their projects on budget resource level. The functional mangers in their turn allocate personal resources within the budget frame. In this way Sigma Connectivity makes realistic and high performance plans. This is also good to avoid stress through a transparent involvement of people.
Having all information in one common database gives the benefit of quick and transparent reaction and prioritization on the part of management, when unforeseen situations arise.
Forecasts and pipe line customer orders are introduced at an early stage in MPI and given a probability parameter in order to view the consequences on the longer horizon for resource demand by competences as well as delivery performance and financials.
Project and line managers benefit from the transparency and flexible information customization. They can look at totals or drill down to essential details as needed. They can see and analyze anything, the work break down structure, the progress and resource allocations for the individual project as well as information across projects and resource groupings. It might be capacity utilization, financials and early warnings. All delivered interactively in easy accessile overview displays.