Fhe Case Study

Lump has discovered that there is a need to improve the procedures, organization, ND project control systems to make new-product introductions go more smoothly. Discussion Questions What steps should Donaldson take to improve the new-product development process at FEE? What could be done to clarify the organizational relationship between product managers, technical program managers, and manufacturing mangers? What can be done to better manage the work-load of the engineering services department? Evaluate the plans and the expected results from the new Analysis CAD-CAM system.

Questions . What steps should Donaldson take to improve the new-product velveteen process at FEE? Another step that Donaldson needs to take has to do with resolving the problem of coordinating the relationship between product managers, technical program managers, and marketing managers.

Lump needs to clearly define the requirements necessary at each phase of project development so that the engineering services department is able to produce results in a more efficient manner than is currently possible.

The new product development process can also be Improved by greater communication between manufacturing and reduce design managers. Currently the product design department admits that once a product Is developed It Is typically “thrown over the wall to manufacturing”, because of this lack of communication product quality often suffers and problems arise after products are introduced to the market. Manufacturing must be more involved in product design. Only the manufacturing perspective can help eliminate problems that might arise due to manufacturing processes, limitations, or costs.

Donaldson explanation of how the company currently tries to resolve this problem wows the inadequacy of the present new product development process: “Manufacturing has enough problems to worry about with today’s products without bringing new products into the picture too. We try to anticipate manufacturing problems for them before release to production”. With these steps in place Lump is going to see a greater coordination between all divisions and ultimately come up with some great new products. Questions.

What could be done to clarify the organizational relationship between product managers, technical program managers, ND manufacturing managers? Lump has several ways that he would be able to clarify the organizational relationship between product managers, technical program managers, Ana maturating managers.

Lump could redo ten organizational canary that would have a clearer explanation of where everyone fits into the organization. There needs to be a revision of the Job descriptions identifying who is responsible for what tasks.

When all of this is redone, there needs to be a meeting held explaining what has been changed and everyone’s responsibilities. Questions. What can be done to better manage the work-load of the engineering services department? When a certain division of the company has a higher amount of work- load it can create a bottleneck effect.

When this happens it will constrain the capacity of the entire division and an hour added to a bottleneck will add an hour of capacity to the entire factory. There are some things that can be done to help lessen the effect that it will have on the company.

The first thing that could be done is to look at the schedule of each division and start eliminating the unnecessary items. When you have done that there needs to be a reevaluation of where things should be going. The technical documentation services should be moved to the technical program division.

They could hire more employees or give the ones they do have overtime. This could cost the company more money but they would be able to produce the product faster which would generate more revenue. This sounds like a great solution to the many problems the company is being faced with.

I am not personally milliamp with the CAD-CAM system, but from what I read about it, there seems to be some great promise in helping the company. I do however have some reservations about having that kind of technology. Even though the technology will help in eliminating some of the problems, I find that technology does hinder communication between divisions.

If they do put this in place they will still need to have all the divisions come together and be able to communicate problems that will arise in the process. If done correctly the company would benefit greatly from this type of technology.