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![]() See Your Shop Floor in a New Light
By Johnathan Warren, Marketing Associate at KeyedIn Solutions, Inc.
There was a time when project management was associated with businesses primarily focused on fixed-time client relationships, such as consulting and services firms.
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Today project management strategies are being applied to a broad range of fields including manufacturing and shop floor operations. Whether your shop floor is mass-producing materials or making custom pieces, adopting a project management strategy has numerous benefits for small and midsized manufacturers. If this seems like a leap to you, consider this: the sum of a manufacturing business' operations is really a series of processes aligned around a common goal. So it is with project management as well. Every customer order can be viewed as an all-encompassing project that includes every related material, labor, milestone, expense, and quality benchmark. Bringing all of the processes and pieces together in a project-oriented view provides dramatically greater insight into the production process and helps align expectations - so that what was envisioned and designed is exactly what is delivered.
Visibility, Accountability and Adaptability Project management is about visibility, accountability and adaptability. Real-time visibility into exactly what is going on with a certain job at any given moment; accountability of the technicians and other influencers to perform at or above expectations; and adaptability to enable issues to be addressed proactively before they negatively impact the job. In short, project management ensures that a manufacturer's resources are used strategically, risks are addressed, and costs are managed tightly - together driving project performance and profitability.
A Competitive Edge With each customer order, a project is opened in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and all of the related job information is associated with it - specs, materials, shop orders, permits, related jobs. As the job progresses, key milestones are entered. Let's compare two possible scenarios - one project-based and one traditional - from a make-to-order manufacturer.
Traditional Process - less control/insight
Project Management-Based Process - greater flexibility/complete insight
The difference between the two scenarios is minor in terms of process. The greatest difference comes with the project-management scenario delivering greater visibility, accountability and adaptability, thereby increasing the likelihood of success.
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If It Ain't Broke… For example, by reviewing the data within a project, a project manager may see that a certain technician is more efficient operating a certain machine than other technicians. Scheduling can be adjusted to boost productivity. Or perhaps the project data reveals that a certain machine is operating more slowly than usual. Getting this insight early-on puts you in a position to fix the issue before a total shut-down and potentially re-map the workflow so that the project doesn't fall behind. A project management strategy - supported by an intuitive technology solution that is designed for project management - parlays the power of a traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution into an action-based framework. A customer wouldn't call in wondering what your monthly production rates are. They would call wanting to know what the production status is of their order. With a project-based strategy, you can provide a more exact answer. Furthermore, a project management methodology helps keep the big picture in sight for everyone involved. Project managers, decision makers and management are given a clear window to the mission critical elements of a job: planning, scheduling, risk management, quality management, quality assurance and quality control.
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