ZF Group builds manufacturing efficiency with over 25,000 apps on Power Platform

When ZF Group made Power Platform available to all employees, adoption quickly accelerated across the company. The challenge was to encourage development without compromising security or quality.

ZF established a unique, enterprise-wide functional and governance model for citizen developers. This includes a development portal with over 100,000 site visits and 17,000 unique users since its launch last year.

The number of Power Platform solutions has more than doubled in just one year with over 25,000 apps and 37,000 unique active users.

Citizen development is one of the key strategies in our IT digitalization adoption and Microsoft Power Platform is a key enabler of this strategy.

Dr. Milan Kumar, Global Head - IT Data & AI, Process Automation, ZF Group

With over 160,000 employees, ZF Group stands as one of the world’s largest automotive technology suppliers. In 2019, as part of its Microsoft 365 launch, ZF made Power Platform available to all employees. Little did they know that this move would set the stage for a wave of apps across the company. “The adoption of the Microsoft Power Platform at ZF has been nothing short of remarkable. Employees have embraced it enthusiastically, recognizing its potential to drive innovation and streamline processes,” says Jan Falke, Director IT Process Automation.

ZF established a unique, enterprise-wide functional and governance model to manage a fast-growing community of makers and solutions. “Our goal at ZF is to encourage Power Platform development without compromising security or quality,” says Thekla Laux, Manager of IT Process Automation Enablement at ZF Group. Combining these objectives in a balanced way has become the guiding principle for Power Platform development at ZF.

Adopting a structured approach

To structure its functional and governance model, ZF divided its developers into three groups: a broad group of Citizen Developers; Citizen Professional Developers, referred to as ‘Citizen Pros’ by ZF, who build and manage more advanced shared solutions; and a Central Team that manages and supports the entire platform.

At ZF, all Citizen Developers have access to the default Power Platform environment. Inside this default environment, Citizen Developers at ZF are given all the tools and components they need to build basic productivity apps and automated business processes. Solutions built in this environment are managed directly by the developer. Tight DLP policies allow the usage of validated and released customer and premium connectors. This setup allows Citizen Developers to innovate freely while maintaining the integrity and security of the platform.

Citizen Pros can request their own environments with individual access to both released premium and custom connectors. This enables them to build more advanced apps and access relevant data from core systems. But to get that option, all Citizen Pros must first be trained and onboarded through the company’s Power Platform Central Team. Plus, Citizen Pros must adhere to more stringent development and test procedures.

Our goal at ZF is to encourage Power Platform development without compromising security or quality.

Thekla Laux, Manager of IT Process Automation Enablement, ZF Group

Another key part of ZF’s functional and governance model is the “Spot Assessment,” an automated form, built using Power Apps, that all Citizen Developers must complete when they begin developing an app or flow. Along with providing details about who is creating which apps, the Spot Assessment helps the Central Team collaborate with citizen developers on the best development path for an app.

If an app requires advanced functionality or business-critical support, the Central Team will work with the citizen developer as needed. There are also checks managed by the security and data protection teams. This includes a review by the German Works Council—an employee relations team that looks at apps with activity monitoring capabilities to ensure they are following national privacy standards.

Collaboration and teamwork have also been key to driving even faster Power Platform development at ZF. With their Fusion Workshops, process experts from the business are brought together with Citizen and Pro Developers. Together, the group analyses business scenarios in an ideation workshop – a kind of mini hackathon - and then developers get to work on the Power Platform solution. “By fostering fusion development between business leaders and Power Platform developers in our Fusion Workshop, we are generating effective prototypes in as little as five days,” says Laux.

This connection between business and developers is evident in the way apps are managed. A customized ticketing system built with Power Apps allows end users to report issues with an app and send feedback directly to the app owner. “Integrated with our regular ticketing system, we developed a more user-friendly customized system for business users, enabling citizen developers to self-report issues and provide feedback to the app owner more efficiently,” says Falke.

Supporting developers with deep resources

Everything a Citizen or Pro Developer needs to guide them through governance and operational processes can be found on the company’s citizen development portal – from training to detailed instructions on how to begin development and get a solution into production. For Citizen Pros, this includes details on the company’s Application Lifecycle Management process which is required for all non-personal apps used by multiple employees.

“As our community grew, we recognized that we really needed a single point of information for all makers,” says Katarzyna Gierlach, Head of IT Process Automation Governance & Change Management.

The SharePoint-based portal has proven extremely effective with over 100,000 site visits and 17,000 unique users since its launch last year. Better yet, the portal supports a thriving community of developers which, in turn, has enabled the Central Team of just 20 people to focus on technical support rather than individual training. “Questions posted to our hub often get answered by other Citizen Developers within hours,” says Gierlach. “We have an enthusiastic, low code community with makers who love to share their knowledge and expertise on Power Platform.”

Streamlining business processes

Innovative Power Platform solutions are emerging throughout the company - including the shop floor. The company’s shopfloor management app has digitized the input process for daily status meetings, which were previously reliant on manual entries on a whiteboard in the plants.

The team initially developed a basic Power BI solution that displayed data from SharePoint lists using Direct Query. They then collaborated with a Citizen Pro to create an app with Power Apps, which proved to be a game-changer. Instead of entering data into SharePoint, users could input data directly into the app, covering everything from quality and performance metrics to safety issues. Later, SharePoint was replaced with Dataverse for enhanced performance and additional benefits. “With Dataverse, we can control data access down to specific roles, making the app more secure and providing a more tailored user experience. Managers only see what they need to see,” says Dennis Schimmel, Head of Lean goes Digital at ZF.

An administration app allows each plant to deploy its own shop floor management solution within minutes. “The speed at which we can set up our shop floor management solution to meet the needs of each factory in our network has really surprised and impressed employees,” says Schimmel. This efficiency has led to the app’s adoption by over 140 plants and 5,000 workers within the ZF network.

Measuring real business impact

For an innovative company like ZF, the impact of adopting new technologies is critical. ZF has thoroughly assessed each solution, considering cost-effectiveness, operational costs, and one-time expenses. To measure this value, ZF introduced an economic impact baseline calculation. Based on telemetry, applications are grouped by estimated size which is determined by the number of user sessions (XL= 5000+ sessions, L=1000-5000 sessions, M<1000 sessions) and benefits are adjusted for each size. This ongoing assessment continuously tracks the payback and overall value generated by the platform. The numbers speak for themselves:

The number of Power Platform solutions has more than doubled in just one year.
The proportion of XL, L and M solutions versus personal productivity solutions has increased fourfold.
By the end of 2024, the forecasted benefits of Power Platform solutions at ZF are expected to increase fivefold.

In addition to monitoring economic impact, ZF has developed dashboards to track overall maker activity. “We utilize the Power Platform metrics from our Power BI dashboards to predict which solutions may need scaling or might be redundant, aligning with our strategic IT landscape goals and driving more effective solutions,” says Falke. This initiative began with the monitoring tools included in the Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit. The kit’s Power BI dashboard offers real-time telemetry, such as the number of active environments, apps, Power Automate flows, connectors, and makers. In total, ZF has 25,000 Power Apps in production with over 35,000 Power Automate flows.

Embracing the future

As ZF continues to expand its use of Power Platform, the company is exploring new opportunities for innovation. ZF has begun exploring how Copilot in Power Apps can be used to accelerate development even further. With Copilot, citizen developers at ZF will be able to build an app, just by describing what they need using natural language.

“Citizen development is one of the key strategies in our IT Digitalization adoption and Microsoft Power Platform is a key enabler of this strategy,” says Dr Milan Kumar, Global Head – IT Data & AI, Process Automation, Integration, Innovation and Sustainability at ZF. “With the right governance model and a secure platform in place, we have revolutionized citizen development, giving power to employees to innovate business and sustainable processes.”

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The speed with which we can set up our shopfloor management solution to meet the needs of each factory in our network has really surprised and impressed employees.

Dennis Schimmel, Head of Lean goes Digital, ZF Group