The Company: KARL STORZ is a global manufacturer and distributor of endoscopes, medical instruments and devices. Its range of endoscopic instruments for human medicine, veterinary medicine, and industrial endoscopy now includes more than 15,000 products. The most recent KARL STORZ developments are in digital documentation systems and comprehensive operating room concepts. Headquartered in Tuttlingen (Germany), the company has subsidiaries all over the world.
The Challenge: The company’s product development specialists are located around the world and work in virtual teams. Previously, they had been working with various types of Excel spreadsheets to manage their projects and plan resources. With increasing complexity, internationalization and more products to develop, this quickly became a major challenge, leading to the company’s decision to implement a unified, professional project management system for everyone.
The Solution: The new project management solution is based on Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint. The company has also implemented TPG PSLink to automate data synchronization between SAP and Microsoft Project, along with TPG ResourceLink, which facilitates the population and constant update of resource information in Microsoft Project Server.
The Benefits: With the new system, KARL STORZ always has accurate, up-to-date information available about which resources are available to work on specific projects. It also has an accurate overview of project progress available at the touch of a button. User acceptance is high and the system is now being extended to users in other departments.
“With this unified approach, management has immediate access to information about which resources are available for a project, how the cost situation is looking for each project or sub-project, and where a project manager needs to intervene to readjust resource utilization.”
Johannes Rehberg, Director Project Support Services, KARL STORZ
