Alessandro FeliciAerospace Business Development Manager| Saint-GobainParis, France
Hi all,
I am taking over a project for developement / implementation of hundreds of parts in an industrial manufactring environment. As the project was prepared in a hurry and got off to a late start, I now find myself in the position of having to deliver a timeline rapidly, when several technical details of the items to be manufactured are missing. Has anyone faced such a situation in the past? Saving Changes...
Alessandro,
In aerospace, we always implement projects without having all the information. That is the nature of the industry. If you don't launch a program at risk, you aren't very likely to be competitive.
I'm still not clear on whether you have a large purchase order for individual parts, whether they are build-to-print or built to specification control documents, or you also perform an integration function. My career has largely been in the engineering integration/project engineer role for Boeing, and the solution paths for what you're describing take many forms.
The PM never manages all the part detail level plans. Many of those are the responsibility of manufacturing engineering (ME) who builds the plans from materials procurement through installation in the vehicle. The PM manages the integration of the many detail level plans.
Parts are generally categorized into groups with similar manufacturing processes. Bent parts, machined, forgings, molded, composite lay-ups, etc. have fairly similar manufacturing times. That is what we refer to as a "similar-to" part. For project planning, nominal flow times are assumed based on the part class, until the ME identify parts with longer lead times, which are then managed at the project level as risk items. The exceptions drive most of the PM work.
Electronics and embedded or loadable software (my current focus) require system level integration activities so the planning is more involved, but again, most will follow a fairly standard plan with a few exceptions that require most of the project level planning.
PMs in this situation are seeking to identify the few long lead exceptions that drive the critical path, and manage the critical path, not every detail part. The lower level individual build plans are managed by domain specific roles like ME, IE, or procurement. Those roles track the details and identify when new developments have occurred that impact the critical path. Saving Changes...
