Case study:
How a production planner stabilized production planning and communication with OEM customers
Assigned expert
Production planner
Challenge
A Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive supplier operating more than 120 injection moulding machines was supplying components to leading OEM customers across Europe, Asia and North America.
Production itself wasn’t the issue. The biggest challenge was the disconnect between production planning, customer service and OEM communication. Delivery changes were communicated too late, creating customer escalations, unnecessary pressure on internal teams and a gradual loss of customer confidence.
The main challenges included:
- late communication of delivery changes,
- OEM customers being informed about supply issues only shortly before shipment or after delivery,
- an increasing number of customer escalations,
- overloaded customer service planners with no backup capacity,
- the need to align production planning with actual manufacturing capacity and customer demand.
GQ solution
His role was not only to support production planning, but to reconnect production, customer service and OEM customers. The objective was to give customers early visibility of potential delivery risks while ensuring that production plans reflected the plant’s actual capacity.
Key activities included:
- taking over customer service responsibilities and providing backup for the client's production planners,
- adapting to SAP processes and OEM communication standards within the first week,
- managing daily communication with customers across Europe, Asia and North America,
- proactively informing OEM customers about potential delivery risks before shipment,
- coordinating production planning with manufacturing and customer service teams,
- supporting production scheduling based on customer demand, delivery priorities and available production capacity.
Result
- greater transparency and better delivery visibility for OEM customers,
- greatera significant reduction in customer escalations,
- stronger coordination between production, production planning and customer service,
- reliable backup for internal planners without affecting customer service levels,
- stable production planning and production scheduling throughout the project,
- a fully stabilized operation after six months, with no further external support required.
Good production planning starts with the right information
Production planning is about more than machines, capacity and schedules. It depends on how quickly the right information reaches the customer. This project showed that proactive communication, realistic planning and early visibility of delivery risks help OEM customers make better decisions while significantly reducing escalations.
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