Project Management tools for a production setting

Question

Does project management have successful tools and benchmarks to ensure on-budget and on-time delivery within a production management setting.

Answer

Project management has been developed over many years to possess a wide range of tools aimed to help in the design and implementation of projects of different kinds. These tools and techniques help to ensure the success of projects. In a production setting there are specific requirements that are likely to be in place which project management must address. For example, disruption and downtime in production can create extremely large loss in revenue, so must be kept to a minimum. In addition, projects that alter the production systems must ensure that they do not negatively affect their quality, such as by incorrectly installing equipment. One valuable tool to help avoid the problem of timing and disruption is with ‘critical path analysis’. This method maps out the activities and the times needed for each, in doing so it identifies which could be delayed and which cannot without affecting the overall project deadline. From this disruptive projects can be minimised and more resources allotted to speed up these critical activities, while non-critical ones that can be safely delayed can have reduced resources to save on cost. To ensure that the projects are successful in terms of quality (and in meeting budgets) there are many approaches that could be adopted. For example, spending the time to create a detailed project plan and gaining the input of relevant stakeholders is an important stage. This ensures that the project will have good awareness of potential problems, and can be designed using a wider range of expertise. So, if the project will affect a production facilities stores (storage for parts, stock, consumables etc.) it makes sense to include the stores manager in designing the project. So we can see that there are a range of project management techniques to help production projects.

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