Aircraft Systems
SITUATION
Major developer and supplier of defense and commercial aircraft systems needed to improve its methodology for tracking project progress and reduce product development cycle time.
DRIVER GOAL
- Improve the effectiveness of Integrated Product Teams (IPTs).
- Improve management/engineering time utilization.
- Develop consolidated reporting.
RESULT
- Reduced “in-meeting” PM and Engineering hours.
- Defined roles and responsibilities across PMs, IPTs and programs.
Case Study
Optimize Product Development
Issue
A major designer, developer and supplier of defense and commercial aircraft systems who was contracted to supply replacement parts and to design and implement modifications and upgrades for a military platform needed to improve its methodology for tracking project progress and earned value, improve the effectiveness of its Integrated Product Teams (IPTs), and reduce product development cycle time.
Highland Approach
The Highland Group analyzed the product development process and the existing project tracking and reporting procedure, flagging opportunities to remove inefficiencies and improve effectiveness. The team also defined critical metrics and implemented a System For Managing to those metrics.
Actions Taken
- Consolidated financial and manpower reporting, as well as milestone and status reporting.
- Significantly reduced the number of and hours spent in meetings.
- Put a process in place where critical project status information shared in IPT meetings is captured and proliferated.
- Focused the senior engineering staff assigned to the program on engineering functions, instead of administrative tasks.
- Developed consistent form-fit-function and contracting requirement definitions between delivery orders.
- Coordinated the earned value system with significant semi-automated data transfer.
- Although product genesis is the existing product and capability set, there is now a consistent understanding of the requirement for re-use.
- Defined monthly business and resource program and across-program metrics that gauge: customer satisfaction, earned value for labor and materials, staffing status, working capital, aged receivables, cash flow, operating margin, and test and quality.
- Mapped and integrated the modeling and testing process.
