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What he HELL is project quality management? And why does it matter? First, let's state why it matters. Studies continue to find that one reason for poor project performance is rework, largely due to inadequate planning. Crosby's quote above says it all --doing things right the first time does not add to the cost of work. It’s rework that is wasteful, and the studies consistently find that it accounts for about 30 percent of project costs. For that reason, project quality management is one of the most important, yet overlooked, activities that one should consider in accelerating your projects. Clearly, if one can reduce or eliminate rework, one can do your jobs faster and cheaper at the same time. This means that one reach breakeven faster with new products, giving one some protection from competitors who might follow one very quickly with their own products. Furthermore, one reduces the probability that one may have to cancel a product development project because the product will never yield the required return on investment (because one has reduced the investment). Building in steps that reduce rework through improved quality is a no-brainer! SIMULTANEOUS PRODUCT and PROCESS DEVELOPMENT Two major factors affect final product quality. One is design; the other is the manufacturing process. Both must be carried out properly. If one design a perfect product and produce it using a flawed process, the final product won’t conform to its requirements. Likewise, the best manufacturing process cannot produce a perfect product from a flawed design. For that reason, the best way to accelerate a product development project is to design the product and the manufacturing processes simultaneously. This approach will be described in subsequent sections of this section. PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT DEFINED The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) suggests that project quality management includes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It covers three major processes: 1. Quality planning --Planning how to assess and en sure that the project will meet the project specifications and related quality standards. 2. Quality assurance --Conducting tests and evaluations to assess whether the project meets quality requirements and standards. 3. Quality control --Monitoring project progress against the pre-established plan and ensuring that proper corrective actions are taken if project work fails to meet quality requirements. This generic project quality management system is suit able for all different types of projects. For new product development projects, while we will also follow these main processes, we focus more on the specific aspect of the new product development project quality management systems (NPD-PQMS) that cover the following areas: 1. Design quality --This is ensured by planning, assessing, and verifying at the beginning of the project whether the design of the new product conforms to all design rules and specifications. This includes both software and hardware designs. 2. Product quality/product design validation: Achieved through the planning, assessment, and verification of whether the final product conforms to the product specifications. This includes all the different types of product testing. It too should be planned and organized from the beginning of the project. 3. Process quality --Achieved by planning, assessing, and verifying the manufacturing processes used to produce the new product. This should also be planned and organized at the beginning of the project, but it will become more active during the engineering run and pilot production run. 4. Project quality control --An audit of project implementation procedures to monitor, assess, and feed back the control of this specific project in order to fulfill the requirements of design quality, product quality, and process quality. 5. Project management audit --A system audit con ducted to review, assess, and improve the project management system itself, in order to assure that all projects are managed systematically, consistently, and effectively. This is a proactive approach to ensure that projects are done right the first time, every time. DESIGN QUALITY The actual design of the product has the greatest influence on its quality. If a product is designed to perform better than the product specification with acceptable manufacturing tolerance, one will have fewer problems during the production phase. Likewise, if a product is designed to barely meet the specifications, then production must perform more tests to ensure that the specifications are being met. This is the basic philosophy for the Six Sigma program. For this reason, de sign quality is one of the most important elements in new product development projects. To prevent or minimize design quality issues, the team must plan design quality at the outset of the project and integrate the design quality plan with the overall project plan. At the design quality planning stage, the team should take inputs from the following key areas: 1. Design rules --Based on their own past experience, many companies have established their own in-house design rules to guide designers in developing good products. If such rules are unavailable, the team should follow the standard design guidelines published by their suppliers or by professional institutes. The design quality plan should ensure that these design rules are followed; a written report should be prepared to describe exceptions. 2. Lessons learned from previous projects --Mistakes made in previous projects, or problems and issues associated with them, are the most valuable lessons for the project team. The design team should review these problems to ensure that they won’t be repeated. The design quality plan should ensure that these issues are addressed during design review meetings. 3. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) --This process was described earlier. The design quality plan should address the problems and issues identified by the FMEA. 4. Benchmarking and competitor analysis reports: These are conducted in order to evaluate the best-in-class products and your competitors' activities. These studies will provide one a clear under standing of the product that the team should develop and reveal the strengths and weaknesses your competitors' products. These findings will serve as a useful reference for the team developing the design quality plan. 5. Quality data on similar products --Other important sources of quality data are field failure reports for similar products. The project team should examine customer quality data and devise an action plan to prevent problems from recurring. 6. Customer requirement specification --A very important document that specifies clearly the customer requirements and expectations. However, very often this document is not reviewed or is not available for project planning. It’s crucial that this document is reviewed and its key points addressed in the project plan. 7. Quality function deployment (QFD) --A tool widely used in American and Japanese companies to ensure that customer wants and needs are included in the product planning and development processes. The output of the QFD analysis is a priority list of customer requirements correlated to product parts, processes, and control methods. The design quality plan should ensure that these customer priorities are being reviewed and addressed in the project. 8. Design evaluation tests (DET) --These tests are usually conducted by the design engineers to evaluate different design options, and normally done in small quantity with mock up or hand-made samples. The design engineers will plan and conduct the tests when necessary, normally in the lowest level of the work breakdown structure (WBS), and details of these tests may not be included in the overall project plan monitored by the project manager. However, as the DET are conducted by design engineers to select design options, the findings should be reviewed at design review meetings. The output of the design quality plan is a detailed description of key customer requirements, their impact on the project, and actions to be taken by the project team to ensure that these requirements are met. The key information to be included in a design quality plan is summarized in the following section. Design Quality Plan _ Prioritized customer requirements --Detailed descriptions of top-customer requirements and expectations. _ Design considerations and criteria for key-customer requirements --Design criteria that must be met to fulfill these customer requirements. _ The measurement method for these design criteria: Methods to measure the effectiveness of the design to fulfill customer requirements. _ Schedule --Date that these designs will be completed and verified. _ Design owner --Person responsible for the design. _ Results/findings --Results of the design verification (at component or subsystem level) at bench-test level, before the system integration. The design quality plan should be used in every design review meeting. The team should determine whether these key design requirements are being met and, if not, specify corrective actions to be taken. The design quality plan should be updated before the next design review meeting. PRODUCT QUALITY-PRODUCT DESIGN VALIDATIONS | Design Validation Test Plan | | Design Maturity Test Plan | The mission of a new product development project is to develop a product that meets specifications, within the time and budget allocated. The purpose of product design validation is to confirm that products have met product specifications. In general, there are three types of tests: 1. Design validation tests (DVT) --These tests are usually conducted by quality and reliability engineers to determine whether the product design is ready for production. The DVT should include functional and nonfunctional tests as well as environmental tests. Most companies will test the product not less than one-third of the mean time between failure (MTBF) specification before starting higher volume production. This is a critical decision for production ramp up and should be included in the overall project plan () 2. Design maturity tests (DMT) --These tests are also conducted by quality and reliability engineers to confirm that the product design is finalized and ready for production. This is normally the last step before the project enters into the project closeout phase. Like the DVT, the DMT should be included as part of the overall project plan. 3. Ongoing reliability tests --Once production takes over, they will continue to assess product quality and reliability by conducting regular reliability (environmental) tests. This is normally a part of production tests and not project-related. PROCESS QUALITY/PROCESS VERIFICATION TESTS The process verification test has two purposes --(1) to verify that manufacturing processes will produce the product ac cording to design specifications, and (2) to verify that processes are in place to produce it right the first time. This includes designing the production process to reduce human errors (including applying the principle of fool-proofing the process, making it nearly impossible to do the step incorrectly), ensuring equipment repeatability, and reducing the effects of material variability. To verify that manufacturing processes will produce the product to meet design specifications, the team should first identify the critical design criteria and run a few evaluation samples built in the actual production environment to verify the results. This is commonly referred to as a pre-production run. Normally, this can be done during the engineering run, pilot production, or production trial run. The samples produced during these pre-runs should be analyzed closely before large-scale production begins. The team should review the production yield and test data, analyze the production rejects, and determine whether they are due to manufacturing problems or design-related problems. This is essential to prevent finger-pointing between manufacturing and engineering. Assuming that the design validation has confirmed that the product will perform as required, process validation must examine four areas that contribute to process problems: 1. Human error --The best way to eliminate human error caused by lack of skill or training is to establish an operator training and certification program. In addition, where possible, design the process to be foolproof or mistake-proof, as mentioned above. 2. Incoming materials quality control --This is an inspection of raw materials before they are used in production. Normally, incoming inspection takes random samples from incoming batches and tests to see that they meet specifications. However, for critical components, many companies will initially con duct a 100 percent inspection and implement sample inspection only after they are sure that material quality is stabilized. 3. Machine capability and measurement system --One of the major process variations is due to machine capability (referred to as CMK) and measurement system variation (equipment repeatability and reproducibility, R&R). The project team should re view these two areas for better machines, and test equipment control. 4. Process capability --This measures whether the process can produce products consistently across multiple production cycles. Design engineers identify the critical process parameters and monitor these using statistical methods, such as control charts. Build a System to Eliminate Human Error Human error is the most common cause of production error. However, it’s important to keep in mind that almost no per son wants to do a bad job (except disgruntled employees engaged in deliberate sabotage). In many cases, failure is due to process steps that are not mistake-proof. The mistake-proof approach is to design the production process so that the operator simply cannot do it wrong. E.g., in the printed wiring board assembly operation, using a template that only has a few small windows that will al low the operators to place the components onto the printed circuit board greatly reduces the likelihood of wrong component placement. No matter what the process, operators must be properly trained to do their jobs. To develop an operator certification program, the team should first identify the process steps that require human judgment and special skills. From this list, the team can then formulate the types of training required to eliminate potential errors. Training ensures that operators understand the processes (manufacturing steps) clearly. The next step is to assess the operators' knowledge. The final step is to ensure that there is a proper training record and identification of who has attended what types of training. One of the smartest ways of certifying operators is to have them teach someone else how to do their job. Their ability to do this is convincing evidence that they know the job very well. Incoming Quality Control One of the most basic process control procedures is ensuring that all materials being used in production meet specifications. As stated previously, inspection usually begins with a 100 % inspection of critical components and changes to sampling after a supplier has proven that they can provide quality components. Nowadays, most companies hold suppliers responsible for the parts' performance at production, thus eliminating incoming inspection. This is called a ship-to-stock program or just-in-time parts. But for new products and new production start-up, most companies minimize their risk by inspecting critical components 100 percent. Machine Capability and Measurement System To build quality into a product, the product design and manufacturing processes play an equally important role. We previously discussed design quality; now we focus on manufacturing processes. For all manufacturing processes, machine and test equipment integrity are at the heart of process control. To en sure that the machines and fixtures will produce consistently good products, the machine capability index (CMK) provides clear feedback. CMK is used to assess the variation of a machine to deter mine if it meets target performance. For new products, the CMK index is used to specify whether new machines can be released to production. This is only acceptable when the CMK is higher than the target value. The target value is set by the project team or management at the beginning of the project. (E.g., the threshold may be "CMK exceeds 1.33," which is equal to four sigma, or "CMK is more than 2," which is equal to six sigma). The machine capability index is also considered as the calculated limits for the process capability index (CPK), as it’s impossible for the process to have a higher capability index than the machine producing it. When the target CMK is not met, corrective and improvement actions must be taken before repeating the measurements. For test equipment control, the team should focus on test equipment repeatability and reproducibility (R&R). When test equipment is used to separate good from bad product, it must be accurate and repeatable. Accuracy means the unit measures correctly. When one unit gives a different measurement than another one, there is a problem with one of them. Repeatability means that the unit consistently gives the same measure of a standard. If equipment measures the same item many times but each time gives a different result, there is a repeatability problem. Usually a test equipment certification group ensures that these issues are addressed. Process Capability A process transforms raw materials into a useful product. A process consists of people, raw materials, procedures, machines, and test equipment. Therefore, process capability is the assessment of the combined performance of these factors in producing a product. A process capability index (CPK) is established by a study conducted on significant product characteristics and process parameters to determine the capability of the process in producing the products in multiple production cycles. A product can have more than one critical parameter, so, to establish its process capability indices, the team should first determine the list of critical parameters. Once this is done, the team must collect the data for these parameters during the engineering run, production pilot run, and production trial run. These data can be used to compare with the specification limits to calculate the CPK for each critical parameter. Like the CMK, the team should set the target CPK for these critical parameters in advance, and when the target CPK is not met, corrective and improvement actions must be taken before repeating the measurements. PROJECT QUALITY CONTROL The purpose of project quality control is to ensure that all planned activities are carried with positive results. Negative results should trigger corrective actions and proper risk assessment and response. The team should prepare a project quality control plan at the beginning of the project, which should cover all the quality activities required for design quality, quality assurance, and process quality. It should also cover all key project activities, such as design review schedules, FMEA schedules, key management milestone meetings, and risk assessment and response plan review meetings. This plan is not separate from the overall project plan, it’s part of it. The format for the project quality control plan can vary depending on the requirements of a company, but it normally covers the following topics and schedule: 1. Top-level project milestone plan --The five major project phases and their respective management milestone meeting schedule. 2. Product specification release and customer requirement specification review meetings --These are very important meetings in which the quality team formulates plans for design quality, quality assurance, and process quality. 3. Design quality plan --The activities required for achieving design quality. These would include a FMEA schedule, design review schedule, and corrective action plan and tracking system. 4. Quality assurance plan --The tests that are required for evaluating product quality, such as the design validation test (DVT) plan and schedule, and the de sign maturity test (DMT) plan and schedule. 5. Process quality plan --The plan for all the machine and test equipment capability studies and process capability studies. This includes the engineering run sample schedule, production trial run schedule, and the production trial run schedule. 6. Risk management meeting schedules --Meetings conducted to perform risk identification, assessment, and response planning. 7. Project problem log review schedule --A regular meeting to review problems and corrective action status for immediate attention and action. Project Management Audit The project management audit system reviews, assesses, and improves the project management system in order to assure that projects are managed systematically, consistently, and effectively. This is not a project team activity, and is normally conducted by the corporate quality team or by independent project management experts. It’s aimed at improving the project management process. The audit criteria should be based on the individual organization's project management process; however, in general, it should cover the key areas as listed in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). There are two project management frameworks: 1. The project management context --This covers the environment in which the project is being operated (such as project organization, structure, and reporting) in the project life cycle. 2. The project management process --How the project is planned, organized, executed, completed, and closed out. Are process steps standardized and clear to all project team members? How are interactions between project team members and other processes? There are also nine project management knowledge areas that project managers should attend to for every project: 1. Project integration management --This is the process whereby a project manager coordinates various functions within the project and integrates them into a consolidated project plan, which details all activities that must be performed in order to achieve the overall project objective. 2. Project scope management --Project scope refers to the project 's boundaries. What will be done? What won’t be done? One cause of project failure is project scope creeping up in small increments, which eventually become very large in total. The project plan should be changed only after considering the impact on scope, and these changes should be approved in writing. 3. Project time management --This is a misleading term. The term "time management" conjures images of personal time management for most people-using personal digital assistants, filo-fax, day-timers, or Franklin Planners. As used in the PMBOK, however, it refers to project scheduling, and proficiency in project scheduling can make or break a project. 4. Project cost management --This goes without saying. Two cost areas must be managed. One is the cost of running the project, and the other is the cost of producing the new product. There may be tradeoffs to be made between these, and senior management must decide on such exchanges. 5. Project quality management --This is the subject of this entire section. It means managing the project in such a way that quality goals are achieved. 6. Project human resources management --This area of knowledge deals with staffing, developing, and managing human resources to achieve project success. In the United States it also addresses discrimination issues. 7. Project communication management --A communication plan is an oft-forgotten aspect of an overall project plan. The team must determine to whom in formation must be sent, in what format and frequency, and in what mode (written, verbal, formal presentations, etc.) 8. Project risk management --Identifying, assessing, and planning for the management of any project risks. 9. Project procurement management --This area deals with the procurement of materials, capital equipment, and outside services for a project. 10. Professional responsibility --This area deals with the conduct expected of project managers in order to as sure that ethics violations are not committed. PROJECT MANAGEMENT AUDIT GUIDELINES The project management audit is an effective method to assess the status of project management in an organization. I don’t intend to describe a project management audit in detail, as there is no one way of conducting an audit, and it’s out side the scope of this guide. However, to the degree that the project management process is itself flawed in some way, one won’t be able to accelerate your projects. Remember, process will always affect task outcomes! For that reason, brief guidelines on how to conduct a project audit, together with a checklist for launching an audit in an effective and efficient manner, follow. One benefit of using a standard checklist is to enable a comparison among the audit results for different projects in order to determine if improvements are being made. The project management audit should be based on following documents: 1. The audited organization's project management process or methodology --One objective of the audit is to determine if the methodology is being followed, and if so, is it effective? If it’s not effective then a change to the methodology must be made. 2. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) --The audit should determine if the two project management frameworks and nine knowledge areas (as discussed above) are being ad dressed properly. 3. All project documents --There are many project documents, such as project scope definition, management milestone meeting minutes, the overall project plan, project meeting minutes, and so on that pro vide information for the audit. 4. The corrective action log --The problems encountered, and their corrective actions and status. 5. The related product roadmap --How projects are being planned, initialized, and executed. This is based on the product strategy or an ad-hoc project. The project management audit is conducted by examining project documents and conducting interviews with the project manager, project team members, and stakeholders. The detailed checklist follows: Topic | Knowledge Area Q/N Descriptions Results/ Response | Action Required? Answer Yes / No to the following
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