Engineering Process Tracking

[micro72w]

I am looking for a better method for tracking the different processes during our product development. I would love to be able to customize something besides having a spreadsheet that has 60-70 columns.
Item that I track are for the prototype, preproduction and formal release stages. Where I track sub-status for drawings, reviews, reworks, mat'l acquisition, manufacturing, assembly and rework of parts and documentation.
On top of having something to better track my project status I would love to be able to hire a consultant to come in a examine our engineering processes. I am able to find many consultants that work on manufacturing and business improvement but I have never found an individual or company that can deal with an engineering department.

I appreciate any insite and thank you in advance

 

[MikeHalloran]

Have you tried MS Project? I think a time-limited demo is still free.
There are other products sold for project management. The cheaper ones are >>far<< less functional. In many cases, they simply provide a nice graphical presentation for something you have to do manually anyway. In most cases, they just make the easy stuff a little easier, and don't help with the harder stuff.
The more expensive ones are _far_ more expensive. They may be proportionally better; I have never used them.

You may be seeking an impossible goal, e.g. devoting less of your time to project tracking as a part time job.

It isn't. Part time, that is.

I used to tangle regularly with one company's PERT system. His name was Dominick. Tracking projects was his _only_ job. I didn't realize until decades later how important his job was, and how well he did it. ... after I had seen (and been) too many counterexamples.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[tbuelna]

micro72W,

Look at this list and try the ones that are listed as open source (ie. free). A free software will help you decide on what you really want from an ERP application.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software

I think what you are doing is a great thing, although it's usually a thankless task. I'm an engineer currently working at a small aerospace company, but I have also worked for some of the largest aerospace companies in the world. When I first came to the very small company I now work at, one of the things I pushed management to do was implement the industry standard QA process AS9100. It was an uphill battle that took several years, but eventually the company got an AS9100 certification.

At first, almost every employee in the company squawked about having to document why and how they did things, making sure every aspect of what was done in engineering and manufacturing conformed to a controlled process, and finally making sure we used the data that is collected to improve our work processes and quality. Now that management and the employees are used to the QA system, they (almost) all think it's a great thing, especially the company owner.

QA is a big deal in the aerospace business for obvious reasons. But the manufacture of a product in any industry would also benefit. The most important thing I would recommend to your effort is to make sure that you take a balanced approach in your QA and process controls. If you can make a clear case to your management that the costs of your QA and process control initiatives are worthwhile, then your job will be much easier.

As for hiring an outside quality consultant, that would be helpful, but you need to be careful about how you use the consultant. As I described above, you will get lots of resistance when implementing QA and process controls if the employees are not accustom to working in such an environment. If you bring in an outside consultant that begins demanding employees change the way they are doing things, it will create lots of animosity. A better approach would be to select an employee that is well respected (and willing to take on the task) and have the consultant provide guidance to that employee on implementing QA and process controls.

Good luck with your efforts.
Terry

 

[micro72w]

Mike & Terry

Thank you for the responces. I currently do use Project for the task and resource management of our projects. I am looking down at the drawing level. Yes Project can do this but I think it would be pretty difficult to maintain.
We usually have 150-200 new parts in a project and tracking the stages of development, documentation, system implementation, raw material and then the 3 stages of manufactureing becomes a monumental task. We do have a business/ manufacturing system and it can handle things once it gets to the system, its the getting to the system phases that I am looking to improve.
Regarding the process improvment to our engineering department. Engineering as you know is such a custom function within each company. It is tailored to the products and the industies that is serves. My quest for a consultant has been going on for many months, I posed the question at an industry conference and at an ASQ meeting in our local area. I think my problem lies within what I am looking for, that is to have a consultant come in and examine the way we do product development and suggest ways we can short cut or offer new perspectives on the process of creating new products to our industry.
Our company is growing at 15-20% per year for the last 5 years and we have simply outgrown our capabilities and simply hiring more people can't fill the gaps given the training upswing to become efficient. Throwing bodies at the problems simply isn't working.
Myself, I am working 80+ and haven't had a day off in about 6 months. to put it mildly I'm about to pop. (sorry about the rant). A few months ago I spent some time investigating the Baldrige process and it sounds great, but it is quite time consuming. This is where I want the consultant to help.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

Cheers

 

[MikeHalloran]

Clearly you could start by splitting your own job in half and hiring someone to do that half, at least for a while.

Fresh eyes are often helpful, but my personal experience says that it takes more than a year of working within an engineering department to begin to understand the _real_ process, which is often so stealthy that no consultant could hope to understand it, much less improve it. Consultants typically come in and indidually interview the incumbents, then deliver a melange of what the incumbents say, along with a big bill. Unfortunately, most of the incumbents don't perceive the real process.

I.e., my experience says that outsiders can only improve the FAUX process, the one that doesn't really do the work that's responsible for the company's success.

Yes, I have seen that faux process uprooted and revised and made much more efficient. Unfortunately, the _real_ process relied on the faux processes's inefficiency to provide resources to steal, so improving the faux process basically killed that company. I think the remains are up for sale, again..




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[tygerdawg]

Mike has good insight, I'll add some more. Perhaps I have enough gray hairs & project battle-scars to know **just a little bit**.

Project management software like MSProject and Primavera can be used to great advantage. There is a reason they cost so much, and a reason why effective "Project Management" is much more than making pretty Gantt charts. But micro level of control requires very high level of management effort. The relationship of effort to results is at least linear, probably more likely parabolic, and trends to exponential on occasion, and certainly exhibits a point of diminishing returns.

I knew a company that built custom machinery and used Primavera. They had a full-time, dedicated "project manager" (Primavera jockey) to construct & run the schedule and tell team members when they had to accomplish which task. They were very efficient, and they also turned down jobs (and lost potential revenue) when the schedule showed they had insufficient resources to complete a project on time. That extreme level of control requires heavy effort and management commitment. Most folks don't do that, most companies won't do that, and what you get is blocks of time vaguely defined as "Product X SubSystem 7 Development" or some such rot, with a hundred different tasks hidden inside of it. That's a less efficient, less effective method of running a project but it will fit in the available resource allotment and managerial abilities of most companies. The end result is things take longer, there's more opportunities for screwups and delays, and the inevitable zings to your credibility and career because you "missed a project deadline."

As a compromise, what I have learned to do is develop a detailed-as-possible project plan. The task durations are allotted as if I had 100% dedicated time to work on them. Then my resource allocation is the resource (me) divided by an inefficiency factor (usually determined via experimentation & observation over time). Tasks are prioritiezed and the project levelled for resources. For example, at one company my efficency was only 40% or so due to silly meetings, split duties, etc. It made all my tasks take much longer. But I started hitting all my deadlines. And, ya know what? That seemed to be the only thing that my Pointy Haired Boss cared about.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[GregLocock]

If you have a lot of projects at once then one approach is to have standard timing plans, and then decide which one a given project should use. This does of course assume that you actually know how a project is run, I suspect many companies don't really know, even if they are ISO 9000.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[bigTomHanks]

Man I hope that you are being paid for your overtime!

The problem that you have is one that many companies have. They have a lot of processes that they feel they need a structured process to control. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to integrated all vital systems together into one program. This is where the ridiculous spread sheets come from. To me those spread sheets are what I call "managerial" jobs. Managers complete and analyze them because it's their job to know the status of things to ensure that work is being accomplished. The best way to alieve some of this work is to distribute some of the work and trust your people to handle things. If you are tracking things that don't need tracked or have complicated processes to get something simple done I would consider backing away from those things. It shouldn't take an act of congress to get a minor task completed. Allow your people to communicate amongst themselves to get stuff done and go on with your business. Everything doesn't need documented.

 

[MikeHalloran]

>>>Everything doesn't need documented. <<<

You are gonna puke when the ISO virus comes to your town.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA