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PSA Peugeot Citroën is working on a new design process and is customising its development cycles for individual projects. It hopes the measures will revitalise its business by 2010.

In the past the firm relied on a single process to which all vehicles across both brands adhered. In February, PSA’s new chairman, Christian Streiff, announced ambitious plans to improve slim profit margins. These require new approaches.
Streiff’s CAP 2010 plan will shorten processes, introduce more models and reduce overheads.

“We’re adding six new vehicles by 2010,” said Nicholas Lee, PSA head of technical affairs. “By tailoring the development cycle for different types of projects, depending on how much engineering content there is, we can reduce them individually.”

The strategy also aims to cut total overheads by 30 per cent in the next three years. The OEM will reduce spending by sourcing more parts globally and working more closely to integrate suppliers earlier in processes.

PSA is looking to increase the rate of savings by six per cent each year.

The company will cut 4,800 jobs in France through a voluntary redundancy programme, but only a small fraction of these will be engineers. It employs 122,000 people in France; just 15,000 are engineers.

For now, job reductions are limited to France. PSA will look at other countries in the future, focusing on administrative roles.
“A lot of the strategy is not just about engineering – it’s about the back office of the two brands,” said Lee. “We duplicate a lot of structure to do the same work. Our plan is to find ways of putting those together.”