Hi everyone,
I have recently been hired at a local car manufacturing company, that is planning on transforming/converting one type of van into various types of cars that would serve in different purposes. They already have turned it into a small ambulance as well as a cab (like a London cab).
However, both of these processes took too long because there was no establish process of how to make it happen.
Three parties involved: Production, Constructors and Procurement. Since all of these departments have no prior experience, when the van had to be turned into a cab, it took months to get it into motion. Production relied on constructors, constructors relied on procurement, and procurement relied on information from constructors and production.
So my question is, has any of you ever faced with such a project problem. If yes, I would appreciate your help and recommendations on how should I set up the process, so it can go smoothly.
Thanks in advance, Saving Changes...
Having done this for airplanes, the process depends on your starting point. It will differ if they are new or used vehicles, whether or not you are working from OEM engineering drawings as a design starting point, and whether you plan a point design for each vehicle or a fleet design that will increase non-recurring effort but reduce recurring effort. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
This is a work, putting this inside the PMI ´s framework, for a Business Analyst. With that said, I have faced this type of problems a lot because I worked for Toyota, Chrysler, Ford and PSA/Peugeot. Saving Changes...
I think you will need an overall engineering/solution/architectural lead in addition to the BA which Sergio has recommended. The latter would focus on the "what" whereas the former will be responsible for the overall "how" so that you get a coherent end solution.
Given the overall lack of experience across the team with this type of work, I'd suggest taking an "inspect & adapt" approach involving short feedback loops and lots of experiments to understand what does/doesn't work rather than "big heavy planning and design upfront".
You'll also need sufficient schedule and cost management reserves to cover for realized risks of which they are likely to be plenty given the lack of team experience and hence inability to do good risk identification & analysis.
