Engine of growth

Strong project management underpins Jaguar Land Rover’s powertrain operations team as well as its new manufacturing centre. Sally Percy reports

In October 2014, the Queen officially opened Jaguar Land Rover’s new engine manufacturing centre near Wolverhampton. After being greeted by flag-waving schoolchildren, the monarch took a tour of the new, £500m plant, which will soon produce around 400,000 engines every year.

The opening of the factory marked the first time in a generation (18 years) that Jaguar Land Rover had embarked upon the process of manufacturing its engines in-house. It also marked the first time that the carmaker had designed and specified its own production facility – the most advanced of its kind in the UK.

For Jaguar Land Rover’s project managers, the opening was a particular triumph because they had played a key part in its development.

Back in 2009, Jaguar Land Rover took an important strategic decision. It decided that manufacturing its own engines would enable it to respond more flexibly to market changes and help it to take advantage of opportunities for growth.

In making this decision, Jaguar Land Rover had the backing of its owner, India-based car manufacturer Tata Motors. And, alongside building the new engine manufacturing facility, the company decided to launch a brand new engine design – ‘Ingenium’ – that would be produced at the facility. Ingenium will be used in the new Jaguar XE model, which will be rolled out globally from mid-2015.

Early stages
While the factory was being planned, the company relied on staff members who had project management expertise to help secure the necessary funding from within the business and to draw up the appropriate building and development plans. This was no easy task, says Simon Dudley, Jaguar Land Rover’s powertrain operations business manager: “The financial planning framework of this organisation has never had to cope with building a new factory.” 

By August 2012, the engine plant was still a “muddy field”, according to Nigel Blenkinsop, Jaguar Land Rover’s powertrain operations director, but the dream was starting to take shape. Blenkinsop had just joined the company after being headhunted from defence giant BAE Systems. His remit was to create a powertrain operations organisation that would “discharge the business’s engineering-manufacturing ambitions across its global footprint”. In the automotive industry, powertrain refers to the main components of a motor vehicle that deliver power.

Blenkinsop recalls: “When I arrived, there was a very committed, but small, group of individuals who were pushing the programme forwards. I took the time to design an organisation that was going to deliver on expectations.” Together with Dudley, who also moved from BAE Systems, he produced a detailed work breakdown structure that subsequently led to a more mature organisational structure for Jaguar Land Rover’s powertrain operations.

Challenges
The Wolverhampton site was chosen for the new facility because of its proximity to other Jaguar Land Rover operations – it is no more than two hours’ drive away from the main assembly plants. The plant was designed by Arup and built by Interserve. During the course of planning and construction, the small project team had to navigate a number of challenges. For example, there are 173 different machines in the plant machine shop, including more than 90 high-precision, five-axis machine tools, which have to be integrated into the production system.

In terms of planning, the production system was designed first. The layout of the factory was then designed around the production system. Jaguar Land Rover commissioned suppliers to deliver the necessary equipment and worked with them to come up with the best engineering solutions. Once the equipment was installed, capability testing was carried out to prove that the machine was statistically capable of manufacturing the same part over and over again to the required quality standards. Then the machine was fully integrated with the rest of the production system to test its ability to perform to its full potential.

Rigorous testing has been taking place at the factory since April 2014 and is likely to continue until early April 2015. By setting a target to build a number of pre-production engines by the end of February, the company is testing the capability of its supply chain as well as its own internal capabilities. Ultimately, production will continue to ramp up until an engine is produced at the required time.

Stakeholder management has been critical to the success of the project throughout. The UK government had views about where the factory was situated and, during the course of the build, the company liaised with the local council, as well as residents and schools, to keep them updated on progress. “We’ve built a 100,000m2 factory on their doorstep,” Blenkinsop points out. Jaguar Land Rover sees its employees as critical stakeholders and is focused on keeping them engaged – and safe. Blenkinsop and his leadership team undertake daily safety walks of the site and Blenkinsop also checks that employees are working to specified standards regarding quality and management of the production process. 

Project power
Having come from BAE Systems, where there is a “huge focus” on project management, Blenkinsop was used to working with top-class qualified project managers and he knew the benefits of having a structured approach to running a programme. So he hired Dudley and charged him with setting up a manufacturing business office to ensure that powertrain operations has an integrated approach to its business planning. He also asked him to set up a project management function to ensure that the same amount of focus is applied to the development of the team’s project management capability as to its engineering and operations capability.

“Traditionally, the automotive original equipment manufacturers don’t recognise project management as a function that sits alongside engineering and manufacturing,” Dudley explains. “It tends to be a skill set that we give to our people who are already discharging engineering, manufacturing and purchasing-type roles.”

But Jaguar Land Rover sees the value of bringing in project managers early to secure a successful outcome. “Anything that has a defined start and end point is a project and it requires an appropriate level of project management,” Blenkinsop explains. “The organisation recognises that it can’t manage its projects in the way it has done in the past because of the complexity associated with global operations and its supply chain. There needs to be a significant shift in terms of the skills, competencies and tools that we use to manage our projects.” 

As a result, Jaguar Land Rover has become the automotive industry’s first corporate member of APM and it has training programmes in place that are accredited by the association. It is also looking to recruit more professional project managers to work within the powertrain operations team. “We have a small but perfectly formed professional project manager group,” says Dudley. “But everybody in the organisation is a project manager in the sense that they have a timescale to deliver a project by, a budget to deliver it within, and a quality requirement to meet.”

People matter
Once it has reached full manufacturing capacity, Jaguar Land Rover’s engine manufacturing centre in Wolverhampton will employ around 1,400 staff. Clearly, however, assembling a skilled workforce of this size from scratch is a project management challenge of its own.

“One of our biggest risks is the development of a capable workforce,” says Blenkinsop. “We’ve got around 450 employees. That will grow steadily to 1,400 over the next year and a half. We’ve had to create a structured capability development process for all the disciplines that those individuals are working in. Our associates on the production line go through a rigorous recruitment process and induction. We then develop them through a programme called ‘The Powertrain Way’, which teaches specific skills. This helps to create an engaged and committed workforce, which is essential in any successful business that has people at the heart of its operations. They can spot and fix issues quickly and they have effective communication skills.” 

Jaguar Land Rover’s powertrain operations unit has come a long way from the days when it started with around 20 employees seconded from other parts of the business. Since then, it has grown rapidly through external hiring, with many of its recruits coming from abroad due to the shortage of powertrain skills that exists in the UK. “We have recruited from every continent in the world, except Antarctica,” reports Dudley. In particular, Europe and China have proved fertile hunting grounds for finding suitably qualified professional staff with the right behaviours. 

And behaviours are incredibly important to Jaguar Land Rover, it seems. As Dudley points out: “We’ve set ourselves a clear and compelling mission and goal for the organisation. It’s about setting new standards globally in manufacturing. That is done, in part, by getting the latest technology. But to become the best engine manufacturer in the world, which is our goal, our differentiator won’t be our equipment. It will be our people.” 

Lessons learned
“We spent a lot of time developing our strategic objectives and behavioural values. So it’s really clear what we’re all trying to achieve. And we have very clear behavioural targets that our leadership is committed to deliver.”

“Choose your partners wisely. We’ve selected some highly skilled and capable organisations that have been prepared to invest in both their own development and our development. Without our partners, we would have really struggled.”

“It’s important to get the right resource in early across your key functions.” 

“Senior-level involvement is key. Visit the shop floor. Go, look, see what’s happening for yourself. This is also incredibly powerful as an engagement opportunity with your employees.”

“Having a robust project management function is critical to recognising the pinch points [in an organisation] and doing something about them.”

Simon's CV
2013 – present
Powertrain operations business manager, Jaguar Land Rover
2010 – 2013
Head of business operations – industrial capability, BAE Systems
2008 – 2010
Head of business and programme management – engineering internal supply, BAE Systems
1988 – 2008
Various roles at BAE Systems, including engineering delivery manager and technical specialist in struct

Nigel's CV
2012 – present
Powertrain operations director, Jaguar Land Rover
2005 – 2012
Director, shared service operations and manufacturing, BAE Systems
1991 – 2005
Various operations, programme and engineering roles, Ford Motor Company