This paper presents the action research conducted to streamline and automate workflow at McLaren Automotive Asia Pacific (APAC) based in Singapore. McLaren is a British luxury supercar manufacturer with racing lineage dating back to the 1960s. McLaren Automotive produces luxury performance road cars from its base in McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England. McLaren Automotive has more than a hundred (100) retailers in thirty (30) markets worldwide. McLaren Automotive APAC in Singapore, is the regional sales and marketing office for twenty-two (22) retailers in ten (10) Asia Pacific countries.

This paper features a real-world case study of applying Lean Six Sigma (LSS) solutions to improve the sales forecasting and order pipeline management processes in the Commercial Operations department of McLaren Automotive APAC. The three main processes managed by the Commercial Operations team are 1) APAC Regional Sales Tracking 2) The Specification Change Requests and 3) Retailers Commissions Reporting.

The key issues that were identified during this study are legacy sequential manual processing, which requires highly repetitive manual tracking and monitoring, and a lack of end-to-end process visibility.

LSS DMAIC was applied to address these three root causes. The LSS techniques that are utilised are value stream mapping, root cause analysis, 5S, stakeholder analysis and standard operating procedure (SOP). After streamlining these process flow, successfully engaging the various stakeholders and establishing the SOP, automation using Microsoft Power Automate will be implemented.

This action research is in the final stages with the paper planned for completion end 2024, and presentation during the IEOM conference in Singapore February 2025.

Kaleo Kai Long Mak

Affiliation

Refine Results

Streamlining and Automating Workflow at McLaren Automotive APAC - An Action Research Case Study of Sales Forecasting and Order Pipeline Management of Luxury Supercars in Asia Pacific