Collaborating with teams in other countries

Comat AG is a leading global supplier of high-quality components, systems and services in industrial automation and Railway applications. Manufacturing is in Switzerland, Spain and China, with subsidiaries in Germany, France and Brazil.

Structuring the Project

Comat has over 10 new product releases at any one time. Each new product release is set up as a separate and new project, each project taking on average two years until completion of the product. All users from the different countries that are in any way involved with the different phases of the project are invited to Planzone. The project is broken down into the main activities for the different phases needed for the approval, design, production, quality testing and delivery of each new product. All tasks are created in each of the different activities (phases), and allocated to the team members in the different countries.

an example of the different phases of a Comat Project

Managing different versions of the same product

As Comat produces different versions of the same product (Relays) certain activities are further segmented into sub-activities to manage the work related to these different versions. To avoid confusion in the tasks that are similar for each version, the sub-activities are clearly named with the version of the product.

Collaborating with the team

Any discussions take place directly in the different activities, tasks and milestones in Planzone, allowing for a close interaction with the different team members involved in the process. These discussions are also frequently sent to the email of the users through Planzone, ensuring a better communication flow across the different time zones and ensuring the mobile users are kept up to date

Re-Using the Project Layout

The Planzone Templates are used for the creation of new projects as the workflow
for the different product versions are very similar. This saves the Project Managers time and ensures the teams are immediately familiar with the collaborative environment in each new project.

We would like to thank Comat for taking the time to share their feedback with us.

The Planzone Team