Danfoss

Whole new way to collaborate

Experts in Finland, Denmark, USA and China can work together efficiently.

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Former Vacon Oy (now Danfoss Drives) used to be a small company based in Vaasa, Finland. But the AC Drives they produced are top quality – the business grew and before long Vacon had experts and product development on three continents – Europe, Asia and America.

Growing success brought along growing challenges. Even fundamental things became more difficult: where to find the right requirements management documents, latest versions and updated data.

“In 2010 I was given a mission to take our requirements management to a whole new level”

Kari Haavisto, Portfolio Manager at Danfoss Drives.

A thorough comparison of different tools started. The ALM solution had to meet high standards: great traceability for instance is crucial to get the functional safety certificates of the AC drives industry. In the end Haavisto found out Polarion ALM Solution presented the best features.

Along with Polarion the co-operation with Taipuva Oy started.

“We felt they were a great match for us from the very start. And we were right!”

Experts in Finland, Denmark, USA and China can work together efficiently

Taipuva started to guide Vacon team towards efficient use of Polarion. New processes were build and introduced.

“We had workshops together with Taipuva about the new processes. After this, configuration of Polarion was easy.”

Much greater results than just a new ALM solution were achieved.

“The co-operation and collaboration in our company evolved. Nowadays our experts in Finland, Denmark, USA and China can work together efficiently. Polarion enables everyone to see the same information and same changes in real time.”

Taipuva also had agile software and tools to offer.

“They helped to build easy-to-use tools for project management. We did not have to burden our own IT-support.”

Manual work reduced significantly and the data from former product development projects was now easy to use when a new one started.

More and more tools replaced with Polarion

Then Vacon’s journey continued and it became part of international company Danfoss in a merge. Soon Haavisto heard Danfoss had made its own independent evaluation of different tools and found out Polarion was the best option for them as well.

“The companies already had the same ALM solution which was an asset.”

Nowadays hundreds of professionals at Danfoss Drives benefit from Polarion: it is used widely in all fields from change and configuration management to agile methods of project management.

And the journey continues. More and more tools are being replaced with Polarion.

Migration from Finland to Denmark

Along with the merge another important challenge was ahead. “We decided migrate all data from Finland to Danfoss server in Denmark”, tells Haavisto. In this process Taipuva played a significant role. After piloting and testing the data was successfully migrated. Agile Taipuva attitude and expertise convinced the main office of Danfoss in Denmark to use Taipuva consulting services as well.

“Taipuva has know-how and agile methods. They deliver great quality with reasonable fees”