BorgWarner sought a way to bring the corporation’s 60 international locations together into a single, seamless collaboration platform.

“Our old intranet required employees to retrieve information from up to 50 different intranet sites that differed in look, function and content. It was a static environment with information that was inconsistent, redundant and often outdated,” said Sandra Short, director of Enterprise Business Systems for BorgWarner. “Our goal was create a platform that drove collaboration, not just archived information. SharePoint Server enabled us to speed the process of design, workflow and collaboration, bring products to market faster, and reduce steps in engineering, development and manufacturing processes.”

BorgWarner implemented its new intranet, branded as the Information Collaboration Environment (ICE), to provide its decision-makers, buyers, marketers, engineers, researchers and accountants with accurate, up-to-date information across its global offices. BorgWarner also launched an extranet (ExtraICE) to give its suppliers and partners a single portal through which they can gather general company information, supplier manuals and performance scorecards.

The new intranet has enabled BorgWarner to foster collaboration among its geographically dispersed management leadership teams and communicate consistent messages to employees globally. BorgWarner also found ways to improve its partner relationships, attain better service and reduce costs with ExtraICE, where suppliers can find monthly scorecards and view their performance to identify areas for improvement.

“With SharePoint Server, the intranet has taken on a whole new level of importance at BorgWarner,” Short said. “By putting the power of ICE into the hands of our staff, we’re seeing people in every functional area finding innovative ways to use the technology on a regular basis.”

For example, BorgWarner’s Noise, Vibration and Harshness Group, which provides engineers with specific results from tests the group performs on their behalf, launched a SharePoint Server-powered site where test results are posted as soon as they become available. This enables engineers at a central location to search, find and evaluate test results. In another ICE application, the BorgWarner Morse TEC Engineering Processes Team re-engineered the worldwide engineering sign-off (ESO) process. The re-engineered ESO uses workflow processes for document approval, takes advantage of scheduling and calendaring functionality to coordinate meetings across time zones, and enforces version control.

On the manufacturing floor, one BorgWarner plant improved the manual process of tracking defective materials by launching an ICE site that alerted the quality manager whenever materials were found to be defective. Another location facilitated lean manufacturing processes by using webcams to allow a vendor to manage its inventory through the extranet.

“Microsoft’s integrated collaborative tools are being used to drive process efficiencies in areas such as product development, manufacturing, and sales and marketing across the automotive industry. In today’s environment cost reduction and innovation are paramount,” said David Graff, U.S. automotive industry solutions director at Microsoft. “BorgWarner’s ICE deployment is a powerful display of the global collaboration, day-to-day efficiency improvements and speed of return on investment driving true process innovation.”

BorgWarner has also derived savings from no longer having to pay hosting fees and its new ability to self-publish content. BorgWarner’s ongoing cost of its intranet environment has decreased by 64 percent per year, and the company has already achieved the return on its investment. ICE has grown to more than 5,500 sites, with more than 1 million indexed items to search and 400 gigabytes of storage. The system has been deployed in 18 countries across 60 locations.

About Microsoft in Automotive

Microsoft has been working with the automotive industry for more than a decade. The Microsoft Automotive and Industrial Equipment vertical works with industry partners to develop solutions based on Microsoft technologies that enable original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers and customers to improve efficiency, effectiveness and knowledge across the business. Business applications, Microsoft .NET Framework-based technologies and enterprise platform support help manufacturers accelerate time to market, collaborate globally with engineers, reduce costs by leveraging the power of the Internet, and increase visibility into their production and supply chain processes. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/automotive.