By Wally Stegall and Jon M Quigley Collecting and Reporting Material One approach to collecting and reporting material content is the International Material Data System (IMDS). IMDS is a computer-based material data system used and funded primarily by automotive OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer of cars, trucks, heavy vehicles, agricultural equipment, construction equipment, industrial equipment, military […]
Survival of the fittest is not just a biological concern. Our business must constantly adapt to external stimuli and find better, quicker ways of performing our work. One way to accomplish this growth is through actions sometimes referred to as project post mortem, or an after action report. We have a plethora of tools of […]
Check lists are a time honored way of keeping track of breaking down an objective and monitoring progress. There are a number of benefits to using check lists. Check lists should not be confused with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). A WBS is a form of a check list of all of the tasks required […]
What are we trying to accomplish with a communications plan? Effective project management is the efficient achieving of an organization’s objectives. To do that, we have to keep our project team informed and working toward the target. That includes our project sponsor and other stakeholders. Ultimately our plan should be able to quickly answer the […]
My work experience informs me that the loss of slack is a big risk to projects. Without this wiggle room, we reduce our probability of success. Projects scheduled out to the last available date just do not work. The reality is these are not manufacturing or routine tasks and jobs. Even the rather routine tasks […]
By Kim Robertson and Jon M Quigley When you think of product design and development what comes first to mind? Is it an understanding of our business objectives (scope) followed by functional decomposition of requirements and allocating them to various systems and subsystems to achieve that objective? Is it design to manufacture with designers, facility […]
Our risk exposure starts at the beginning of the project. Even before the project is actually a project. The simple act of scoping a project in the initiating phase already alludes to the risks to which we may be exposed. For example, the minute we decide that our project scope is going to include software, […]
We have mapped how long it takes to prepare the vehicle for testing using the histogram. We have used the Ishikawa diagram to generate ideas we wish to investigate as causing the time to be longer than we would like it to be. Our next step is to see if the ideas suggested in the […]
In our previous post, we have learned the distribution of vehicle preparation time via the visual representation known as the histogram. This does not tell us what causes for the distribution. If we wish to alter this distribution, we will also need to know the causes and take some action to alter. Enter the Ishikawa […]
We would like to revisit our blog post May 2013 and tell the complete story over the course of a few blogs. I realized the importance of showing the use of the variety of tools after giving an ITMPI webinar based upon our book Total Quality Management for Project Management. At the end of the […]