The project focused in the area of Design Engineering, specifically in the product development cycle. The project team was tasked with the development of process, system, and behavior improvements related to new product design. Additional project focus concentrated in three areas that included the enhancement of costing measures, organizational integration, and the development of support roles within the Design Engineering department. The strategy of the project was to instill a cost focused mentality while maintaining performance and quality requirements in new product design.
The project generated results that exceeded the annualized financial improvement level identified in the opportunity analysis. Savings translated into a greater than 10:1 return on the original project investment.
Key Changes included:
- Implementation of a Stage Gate design process
- Design checklists were installed to ensure key criteria were completed and to reduce downstream rework
- Terms of Reference agreements were installed to set the mandate for each design project
- Structured training sessions were completed in MS Project and various other computer related skill sets
- Master schedules and discreet schedules were developed and installed to gain visibility to key milestones
- Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) were developed and tracked in a Weekly Operating Report (Productivity, Schedule Attainment, and Quality)
The Results
Organizational Integration was increased by completing the following initiatives:
Specific results include:
- The development of a Steering Committee responsible for aligning strategic direction to the design process
- Cross departmental opportunity sessions were conducted to identify performance, cost, and quality improvements in all products
- Stand up meetings were implemented across project teams to increase communication and identify variance solutions
- Working teams were developed and were represented by Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Supply Chain, Costing, and Quality. Teams were responsible for analyzing each product by part against predetermined criteria in an effort to identify design improvement
- Multi-department teams were formed to analyze the expected cost impact of design changes
