Freightliner LLC Case Study

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Introduction
Situation
Solution
Key features in Visio
Benefits

Introduction

Freightliner LLC is a leader in the design, development, and manufacture of a complete line of technologically advanced trucks. Whether it's a diesel truck on a cross-continental haul, a school bus transporting students, an emergency vehicle, or a motor home chassis, Freightliner has it covered. The visual communication of ideas, information, and systems helps Freightliner work more effectively. In Microsoft Visio, the company identified a diagramming tool that expedites manufacturing, enhances business communication, simplifies project planning, and helps document network infrastructure. Freightliner uses Microsoft Visio across diverse functional areas and skill levels. It has become the de-facto standard for business diagramming at Freightliner. 

Situation

Two corporate centers and a manufacturing facility in Portland, Oregon, combined with seven plants in the southern United States, house over 15,000 employees of this multi-billion dollar company. Freightliner LLC is a complex enterprise that deals with thousands of suppliers; it comprises nine divisions and continues its expansion through significant acquisitions.

At Freightliner, the goal is just-in-time manufacturing — an ideal method of manufacturing that minimizes inventory costs because materials are ordered just when needed. Keeping tabs on materials and processes is key to the successful implementation of this manufacturing method. As Larry Baldridge, Freightliner's Director of Systems Development, puts it, "Manufacturing facilities center around processes. The best way to demonstrate and communicate these processes is by doing so visually." Indeed, the company strives to display every project, system, network, and business concept visually. Lloyd Hilliker, Program Development Manager, works with teams of people and he wants to "keep everybody on the same page. Communication is by far the biggest challenge in my job. I need something visual to summarize and quickly bring everybody to the same focal point."

Solution

Visio was chosen as Freightliner's business diagramming tool in 1992. What began as a product decision in the Systems Development group has stretched across the enterprise. Uses are numerous and diverse: organization charts and business diagrams, critical path charts that document the progress of new products and corporate acquisitions, network maps and systems documentation, engineering drawings, and more.

Lloyd Hilliker notes: "We looked for a product that had the potential to become the industry standard. It was really important to us to be able to exchange visual information with suppliers, customers, and companies that we were acquiring. There's no question that Visio has become the industry standard we sought. Whenever we deal with the outside world, we ask if they use Visio and inevitably they do."

The company now holds hundreds of licenses for Microsoft Visio, as well as a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for a suite of Microsoft products. It came as no surprise when Freightliner signed on to participate in the Visio 2002 Rapid Deployment Program and provide feedback on the product. Working with early release versions of the product, Freightliner users are already enjoying the enhanced capabilities of Visio 2002.

Better-looking business diagrams

Freightliner users are creating superior business diagrams with Visio 2002. Lloyd Hilliker serves on a special projects team charged with communicating to executives in acquired companies how Freightliner's business operates. "We need to illustrate flows, diagrams, and processes that demonstrate how our business operates — from purchasing to materials planning to QA."

Hilliker uses critical path charts to track progress when Freightliner acquires a company. "When we're integrating a new company into our enterprise systems, we have weekly meetings with huge task lists. We need critical path charts to clarify what needs to get done and when." Hilliker cites the ISO 9000 certification process for new products as another example in which business diagrams are absolutely vital to illustrate Freightliner's compliance with standards.

Hilliker loves using color in his critical path diagrams and appreciates the improvements in Visio 2002 — support for more colors, the use of color transparencies, and smoother text and lines. He also values being able to take an individual object and manipulate it independently of other objects. For example, in Visio 2002, Lloyd can insert a photo into a drawing, use new photo editing tools to enhance it, scale the photo, move it around, and add a text box with great ease.

To illustrate how its business works, Freightliner uses high-level Visio diagrams in presentations to new executives. Using color enhances the impact of the drawing.

Broad range of diagrams

The wide range of supported drawing types in Visio 2002 enables Freightliner to create and share diagrams across a number of key departments. With Visio 2002, Freightliner can create diagrams that convey information tailored to specific needs across the enterprise—from process flows and organization charts, to office and building layouts, to network, web, and database topologies, and more. For instance, administrative assistants and human resource professionals use Visio to create and update organization charts that are distributed throughout the company. Juliet Edwardson, Executive Assistant, says "Our org chart changes all the time. I'm constantly updating the chart and moving names around. Visio is so user friendly that I can open the chart and make small changes in minutes. I use Visio daily, and I think everyone can find a use for Visio."

Enhanced network documentation

The Network Services department is responsible for maintaining and documenting Freightliner's network infrastructure. One of their deliverables is to produce an official map of the corporate WAN. With the solutions in Microsoft Visio Professional 2002 and Microsoft Visio Enterprise Network Tools, a new add-on to Visio Professional 2002 for IT professionals, the Network Services team is able to quickly and comprehensively document their entire corporate WAN. Visio Enterprise Network Tools includes an advanced IP discovery engine that uses SNMP and other protocols to create an automated inventory and diagram of devices and network connectivity. With the ability to automatically map their network, updates to the map will be easier than ever before.

The Research and Planning Program Manager, Tom Gammons, uses Visio for more than 30 percent of his work. "Visio allows me to describe visually the flow of information from device to device throughout the enterprise. I use detailed diagrams in briefing sessions with the managers responsible for portions of the network; for them these visuals provide good system documentation. But I also create a higher level diagram for management because Visio provides the architectural view needed for planning and strategy."

The Network Services department creates Visio diagrams to provide an architectural view of its network for planning and strategy.

Key features in Visio

• Familiar user environment: Because of the Visio alignment with the Microsoft® Office product family, its users are familiar with the classic Office features that are part of Microsoft Visio 2002. Now, Visio shares much of the same interface as Office XP for improved usability. Menus include the personalization options that make Office applications easy to learn—for example, items that are frequently used feature prominently, while others are easily accessible. The new task pane helps users open or start drawings, view the contents of the Clipboard, perform searches, and insert clip art. Common Office tools such as AutoCorrect, familiar keyboard shortcuts, and the Office spelling checker are now built-in Visio features.

• Tighter Microsoft integration: The administrative staff at Freightliner is proficient in creating organization charts in Visio. Now with Visio 2002 they are able to save the data behind the pictures when they import material from other programs such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Exchange Server. For example, in an organizational hierarchy, a shape representing a job position can be backed up by data such as contact information and the previous work history of the employee. Freightliner users are gaining the ability to import and manipulate images into their Visio charts and diagrams using the new clip art integration and photo editing features of Visio 2002. Especially appealing is the idea that now, whenever they embed a Visio object into a Microsoft Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, or a PowerPoint® presentation, the recipient or reviewer will be able to do in-place editing.

• Project scheduling: Product and program managers at Freightliner have been manually entering critical path charts in Visio. Now enhancements to the project scheduling solutions in Visio 2002 enable greater integration with other tools such as Excel and Microsoft Project, which allows managers to leverage the information they have instead of starting from scratch. They can display and publish project milestones as Gantt charts and timelines by importing selected dates and tasks from Microsoft Project. Information in a timeline can be exported easily to create a Gantt chart, and vice versa.

• Computer-aided design (CAD) compatibility: Bringing a vehicle to the marketplace requires coordination across many functional areas at Freightliner. As a product makes its way from an initial boardroom concept to becoming a final product on the plant floor, the use of CAD products may be required. The enhanced CAD compatibility of Visio 2002 strengthens the design and manufacturing process. Users can import and export standard CAD file formats and convert CAD drawings into Visio objects for easy editing or annotation within Visio. Individual CAD objects can become Visio entities as well as full drawings.

• Powerful Web publishing: With the enhanced Save As Web feature in Visio 2002, users can share diagrams such as org charts and engineering drawings on their intranet site and view them with the Visio 2002 Custom Properties viewer. Improved hyperlink positioning, including multiple hyperlinks for a single shape, enable more complex designs to be fully reviewed.

Benefits

• Improved visual communication and understanding: The breadth of diagrams and ease of use in Visio 2002 is giving Freightliner sharper-looking diagrams that are rich in information and can be displayed on the company intranet. The ability to do in-place editing of a Visio diagram that's inserted into another document such as PowerPoint or Word accelerates the review and editing process. Finally, Visio diagrams enable Freightliner to achieve a better understanding of complex business processes.

• Manufacturing efficiencies: Freightliner cites improved critical path charts as a big plus for its just-in-time manufacturing process. The enhanced CAD compatibility of Visio 2002 provides sketching and review opportunities that promote more efficient design and production. Being able to chart the flow of materials and processes in Visio 2002 is a major advantage. Again, using a single Visio diagram improves understanding of complex processes like just-in-time manufacturing.

• One tool across many functions: Visio 2002 is a highly versatile product in the hands of Freightliner's users. From the simplest business uses to complex engineering and technical applications, Visio 2002 serves many needs. Users appreciate the wide variety of templates that allow departmental customization. The way Visio 2002 integrates with other Microsoft technologies and its familiar user environment make it a multi-function tool at Freightliner.

• Reduced drawing time and design costs: Freightliner confirms the company has already experienced significant savings from using Visio. With a familiar Office-like interface and intelligent, predefined SmartShapes®, the drawing process across functions at Freightliner is faster than ever. And the automated network discovery process that yields a picture of Freightliner's network infrastructure is a great time-saver.

With Visio already the de-facto diagramming standard at Freightliner, the company gains an ever more powerful tool for communication and understanding in Visio 2002. As Larry Baldridge says "It doesn't matter if it's trucking electronics, order processing, or just-in-time manufacturing. When we want to facilitate communication and understanding, we do it with the impact of a single Visio diagram." Building on this legacy, Visio 2002 is delivering even greater enhancements to communication at Freightliner.

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