A
Our engineers keep drawing the same system, just slightly differently.
Much of the design work was repetitive. Time that didn't go to research and innovation.
Case · SPG Dry Cooling
The computers now do the boring work.
SPG Dry Cooling builds cooling systems for power stations all over the world. Every design took months of drawing. Today software automates most of that work, and the engineers do research again.
The figures
What changed.
9 → 4
months of design time
The design process that used to take nine months now takes four. And they keep automating.
80%
of the design process automated
What used to be drawn by hand every day, the software now largely does itself.
2 jaar
payback period
The investment in software development paid for itself within two years.
~80%
global Dry Cooling market share
SPG is a world leader in sustainable cooling for power stations.
01 · The starting point
Strong engineers, repetitive work.
SPG had all the knowledge in house, but the design process swallowed up the engineers' time.
B
Our departments work in silos.
Teams worked side by side with little interaction until there were fixed meetings. That led to problems and countless iterations.
C
We want to move to the cloud, we think.
The first question was a cloudSoftware en opslag die je via internet afneemt in plaats van op eigen servers. migration. It soon became clear that the biggest gain lay elsewhere.
Asking the right question.
SPG came to us through our involvement with Cloudalize, a cloud technology. The idea was simply to move everything to the cloud. It soon became clear that the solution lay elsewhere: automating the design process itself, with a custom software application. SPG had little experience with software development. We were exactly the right party to guide them through it.
"It's a paradigm shift, we evolve from an engineering company to a software company and we let the computers do the boring work."
CEO, SPG Dry Cooling
02 · The approach
From a cloud question to process automation.
We redirected the original question, built the software, and brought the people along.
First
Asking the right question
We redirected the cloud question to the question that mattered: how do we automate the design process? That's where the gain was, not in a simple migration.
Year 1
Building with our own branches approach
A variant of the branches approach from software development: teams work in parallel on their part and then merge. Problems and changes become visible sooner, which means fewer errors and faster progress.
Ongoing
Bringing the people along
Change management was crucial. At first there was little confidence that it could be done, but around 30% of the staff became actively involved in the project team.
Now
From execution to research
That same core team now works on ongoing research and thinks about future improvements. The gains delivered are reinvested every year.
03 · The roles
What we did. What SPG did.
We brought the strategic view and the software guidance. The domain knowledge and ownership stayed with SPG.
What we did
The bridge between strategy, software and people.
- Sharpening the right questionRedirecting the cloud question to the transformation question that really mattered.
- Software guidanceSPG had little software experience. We guided the build and the choices.
- Facilitating changeWe helped the internal HR department bring people along with the change.
What SPG did
All domain knowledge and decisions stayed with SPG.
- The engineering knowledgeThe substantive knowledge of cooling systems stayed entirely with SPG.
- Staffing the project teamA third of the staff became actively involved. That core team carries it now.
04 · The result
From an execution team to a research team.
The transformation freed up time for research and innovation. SPG can take on more projects and keeps investing in the future.
“Make IT So is our assurance that we make the right strategic choices in the further development and deepening of the software package.”
SPG Dry Cooling
CEO
