Client Background

• Industry type: Automotive Tier 1 Supplier
  
• Key Products & Services: Automotive Electronics and Software
• Geography of Operations: 18 countries across US, Europe, APAC, and LATAM
• Number of Employees: Approximately 10,000

Being based out of the United States, the company was looking forward to staff a core team of 80 engineers in the North American Technology Center between 2018-19.

One of the company’s prominent offerings included design, engineering, and manufacturing of digital instrument clusters. The goal behind this initiative was to facilitate the FY- 21, 22, and 23 planning of the automotive digital software clusters; and build and maintain its future production software from NA region.

The team was supposed to act as part of a larger engineering team delivering the automotive cluster software to end customers such as Ford, GM etc. To ensure quality while optimizing costs, it was crucial to select the right people for staffing. Due to niche skill needs, it was very difficult to find the right match to staff on immediate timelines. The company needed a strategy to ensure that the inexperience and youth of the team would not impact its end-customer delivery and planning.

Challenges

The client was expecting to witness growth of the Tech Center. The team was supposed to act as part of a larger engineering team delivering the automotive cluster software to end customers such as FORD, GM etc. The entire purpose of nearshoring would get defeated if there was no cost arbitrage or the quality of the output declined.

As a result, it was crucial to select the right people for staffing. Another challenge was to stabilize the team when they start operations in Mexico for the first time. Due to niche skill needs, it was very difficult to find right match to staff on immediate timelines. The inexperience and youth of the team would eventually impact their end-customer delivery and planning.

Solution

Wipro assisted the company in engineer staffing and operational delivery. With our operations and HR teams, we were able to identify and on-board the right people at the right time.

Company’s requirement was expertise in areas like C, C++, QNX, CAN, RTOS, VMODEL, AUTOSAR, and ASPICE. When the right skill match was not found, Wipro successfully trained engineers and deployed them at the company’s site by means of talent architecture programs, referrals, walk-ins, social media etc.

The train and deploy model targeted full/close match (60%) and fresh graduates (40%). Graduates were hired via an online test followed by a personal technical and HR interview. An experienced trainer was called from India to train them with all the skills required for 6 weeks followed by assessment tests. Wipro also participated in the company’s deliverable planning and execution cycles by extending both technical and operational help.

Business Impact

The end-to-end process of deployment took 45 days to execute. 20 engineers were successfully trained for the project and deployed at the site and the same process was repeated by targeting 35 engineers next. Everyone on the team was able to assume work on their respective profiles and deliver at multiple stages of software development from day one of their deployment.

With 40% digital natives in the team, the operation turned out to be quite cost-effective, reducing the expenses by as much as 30%. The quick identification and onboarding of technical resources helped optimize planning time and provided enough buffer for engineering delivery by the newly made team. Moreover, the company received a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score of more than 6 out of 7 for the quarter.