Two Continent - One World

International Project Management & Professional

Responsibilities
Group 11 - PMGT 728-002
Sameer Thapar
Hardeep Sidhu
Abhishek Ahuja
Santiago Montoya Rivera
Ruth-Ann Cleary-Richards
 Overview
Agenda ● Defining the project
○ Industry and Market
○ Geographical Location
○ Timeline
● Organizational Structure
● Application for PESTEL
● Strategy at different levels
● Cultural Mapping
● Project learning method of GPPS
● Barriers to overcome
● Key success factors for implementing
special international project
● Abstract
○ Keywords
● Conclusion
● References
 Defining the project
Identification and
implementation of production
practices to increase production
and cost efficiency throughout all
the factories of the multinational
Pfleiderer AG.
 Industry and Market
An international project to standardize
production system across the global in
order to maximize the global productivity.

Industry
● manufacturing industry (wood
manufacturing processes).

Market
● Western and Eastern Europe
and North America.
 Timeline

Pfleiderer AG Revenue was more Implementation

established in Southern than 1.8 billions of innovative
Germany Euro. approaches
2004 2008

1894 2007 2009

The company Build 23 factories
embarked on growth in Germany,
path with Canada, Poland,
acquisitions in USA, Sweden and
various countries Russia
 Geographical Location

● Western and Eastern Europe: Germany (8), Poland (3), Sweden (2), and Russia (1).
● North America: Canada (7), the USA (2).
Organizational Structure
PESTEL
 Strategy in
different levels
1. Translating the vision/mission
● Increase profits further by focusing on specifics
markets.
● Committing to a market share of at least 15 percent of
each market it operates in.
● Use cost leadership through a full utilization of
learning curve effects and economies of scale.

1. Communicating and high-level aligning

● Create communication channels between factories for
knowledge transfer.
● Create events that affect the interaction of all the
groups of the multinational.
● Implementation of skills in new languages to facilitate
communication between teams.
● Implementation of innovation activities.
 Strategy in
different levels
3. Business planning
Implement international project ‘Global Pfleiderer
Production System (GPPS)’
● Introduction of a worldwide standardized production
system
● Efficient and effective transfer of best practices
between the different factories.
● Standardized production system as a management
tool
● Speeding up knowledge transfer to new green field
operations.

4. Feedback and learning

● Language/culture barriers.
● Competitive environment between factories.
● Factories hide their knowledge from each other.
 ANSWERS TO
THE QUESTIONS
 Project learning method of GPPS
● Challenge based learning: Production clusters were given
challenges to overcome and share their experiences. Further,
apply those learnings in the project based tasks
● Activity based learning: Production clusters were given
activities to perform and compete with each other in order to
increase cooperation amongst employees from different
nations and companies
● Learning curve effect
● Economies of scale
Is knowledge management method
handed well?
● Identified barriers
● Encouraged knowledge transfer
● Recording and implementing performance measures
● Performance matrix with same parameters across all the
factories
● Identifying best practices
 Barriers to overcome
1. Language barriers
2. Areas of operations
a. Dependence on innovation and cost efficiency
3. Acquisitions and organic development
a. Identification and realization of synergies
b. Integration of different organisational cultures
c. Cooperation between employees from different
geographical locations
Key success factors for implementing special
international project
● Performance matrix
● Regular general and project based tasks
● Traffic light system to measure performance results
● Transfer of best practices across factories
● Language training
 Abstract
A multinational company decided to increase its profit by focusing on the beneficial demographic
structure and consumer behaviour. They identified challenges in areas of operation and aftermath of
acquisition. To address all these problems, they initiated a project called Global Pfleiderer
Production System (GPPS). The project target was to standardized production system, transfer of
best practices, speeding up integration processes and maximize overall productivity. The
management divided the companies into multiple production clusters and each cluster was given
subsequent general and project tasks. This was done to increase cooperation among employees from
different nations and acquired companies by overcome language barriers and working method
differences. Also, to achieve the targets for the project. Over the time, activities and challenges
given to production clusters helped individuals to build rapport, increasing knowledge transfer,
overcoming language barriers and reduced downtime. Knowledge among different among factories
can be increased further by rewarding knowledge sharing across various factories.

Key words:
Best practices, knowledge transfer, production clusters, standardized production
system, etc.
 References
Koster, K. (2009). International Project management. Sage
publications Ltd.