24-03-2012, 12:58 PM
ICT in Manufactured off-site Construction
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Specification of the project
You are the IT director of a manufacturing company dealing primarily with off-site construction type manufacturing. Your organization employs 500 people worldwide, with regional offices around the world (Manchester, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney Singapore, Dubai, Istanbul). The organization does not have an ERP system and does most organizational planning and management paperwork manually. There is no supply chain management, mostly relying on relationships and ‘word of mouth’. Organizational communication relies on e-mail, attachment, telephone and fax. Design work is a major issue as regional offices run on different design systems and at times causes production and manufacturing delays.
During the economic downturn, your CEO has requested you to assist in reducing organizational costs (e.g. manufacturing costs. Management overheads, obsolete IT hardware and software, supply chain integration, collaborative design, virtual work bench, etc.) with the help of IT. Your CEO does not want to reduce any work force. It is hoped that your plans will NOT jeopardize the performance and capability of the company today, and when the economy turns around in the next 2-3 years, but to be prepared to meet demands of the future. You will want to utilize the next 12 months in planning and commissioning your new IT strategy.
INTRODUCTON
Recent developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) present great opportunities for firms to communicate information efficiently and timely. Many ICT tools, which can be usefully exploited in the context of process improvement, are being developed and now widely available in the market place. Systems vendors are providing not only generic but also firm specific solutions for process improvement, e.g., knowledge management tools, which could meet requirements of the organisation.
We are currently facing a challenging economic climate which is forcing many companies to cut costs in order to survive. There are different ways of doing this, and unfortunately, a popular one is slashing employees, projects and even entire departments. Consequently, almost everyone in the business world is now looking for a way to justify their work to upper management and other stakeholders in order to be spared.
: Refining the Focus
The PMO's primary responsibility is to manage and execute projects that are central to the organisational goals and objectives. This requires an understanding of both the business strategy and the projects that fall beneath it. Beyond that, it is important to know which projects are short-term, mid-term or long-term. During a recession, many long-term projects are abandoned. On the other hand, if you work solely on short-term projects, you will not be needed once they are completed. For this reason, it is best for PMOs to focus their efforts on a combination of short and mid-term projects that align with company strategy.
Step 2: Executing Projects On Time and On Budget
Prioritising projects is important; successfully completing them is imperative. No organisation has any use for a PMO that does not achieve its goals and get things done. There are several key components to accomplishing this. First, project managers need visibility into resource allocation in order to avoid over or under-booking project team members. This will also ensure that no projects are taken on that your resources cannot accommodate. In addition, team members need to track their time by task in order to provide actuals, helping project managers to understand true project costs and estimate future projects with accuracy.
When project managers can understand what resources are working on and measure actuals against forecasted timelines, they have a better handle on project problems, allowing them to address them faster and with more success.
Step 3: Communicating Results to Management
Once you have the positive project results, you need to ensure that top executives at your company are aware of them. Fortunately, some solutions for managing resources and projects also have dashboards and reports to make this information quite clear. This gives you an opportunity to tell the executives, "These are all the projects we are working on to help achieve our organisational objectives, and here is data that proves that we are executing them successfully." How can they possibly argue with accurate, up-to-date project data?