Q&A with the SCMH Project Management Team

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Quality Horizon, a podcast produced by the IAQG for the IAQG. Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the Quality Horizon. I am your host, Susan Madsen, and with me today is the SCMH Project Management and APQP Alignment Team. They're currently working together on some guidance material, and thankfully, they agreed to take a break to talk to us today. In the room, we have the following members, Amalyo Monson, head of digital quality for Airbus Defense and Space. Ivan Bangnagash, QPM System UK, Airbus Commercial, Jeff Sharon, PNP, CMB OE, Senior Business Operation Manager, Abyonis for GE Aerospace, Doug Trusdale, Supplier Quality Engineering, East Region, Major Commodities Lead, Air Vehicle and Mission Systems for Lockheed Martin, and Diana Drogeni, Air Space and Defense Business, Development Manager for ALTA, and then rounding out the group I have, Punch and Dayo with Collins Aerospace, who will also be joining me today as our co-hosts. Welcome to the show, everyone. In this episode, we're going to dive into the work this team is doing with Project Management APQB Alignment. But first, I wanted to invite one more guest, Mark Doolittle, who is the IAQG Project and Supply Chain Improvement Leader, the group that oversees SCMH, to help us set the stage for this discussion. Mark, can you give our listeners a brief background on why the PSCIT chose to form this project team to create Project Management APQB Alignment Guidance Materials? With the increase in popularity of advanced product quality planning, APQB, the PSCIT and Product and Supply Chain Improvement Team moved a focus a little bit to the tools, the engineering tools of APQB. We wanted to support the appetite for this new process that, obviously, is gaining great land popularity. The realization of this came in the fact that APQB itself is not really an engineering process. The APQB process itself is really a new chronic introduction process that is designed to improve our advanced product development by using quality planning. IE Advanced Product Quality Planning, IE APQB. And coming to the realization that this process really was a planning process is the realization that it really is a program management process. It's a program management or project management process. So creating guidance material around project management or program management became a very high priority for us. Because most of people were thinking that this was an engineering process, and that it was just a compilation of engineering tools, which is really incorrect. At its heart, it's actually a program management process. So the birth of this team and obviously the increase in priority from the PSCIT for the proper execution of this team. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate giving us a little light on that. So it gives us a nice framework to talk and continue this panel discussion, basically, is what we have today. But, gee, thank you again for joining me as co-hosts. If you could, please tell our audience some of the topics that we're going to be covering. Give them a little flavor of what we'll be doing in the next few minutes. Thank you, Susan. So a little bit of a background on what we are doing. This team who is currently working on aligning the project management and APQB guidance material, we realize that we, there are some misconceptions existing, which Mark already talked about. And how do we address those? So we collected some questions from the industry and we invited our team members in this room and get their experts opinion on that to share some light on those misconceptions and get those issues addressed. So what we are going to do is we are going to ask some questions and get their opinion, get their feedback so that we can really provide this input to the industry and address those issues. Wonderful. Let's get started. The question, my company has a very established process for developing and industrializing products. Does APQB imply to be the redundant to the existing activities? Very thank you, Van Kass for the question, very appropriate. And I would like to start emphasizing that all companies, same for quality, time and of course delivery. And at the end for sure, to achieve customer satisfaction. However, we experience everything in their space world, how complex are our products and services, how tight are the schedules that we are confronting, or how much is the pressure that we have in terms of cost. And also the experience, the practical experience so as that achieving this target is not always simple and many companies struggle to do. The APQB basically came to complement the existing programmatic development and industrial processes in order to achieve this on quality, on time and cost, this customer satisfaction. And ultimately, and I will not say less important profitability. It would be key to really achieve a more profitable approach in our respective businesses. You are really right, Amalia, because APQB is about efficiency. So as such in the main reason and acting as multi-functional thing approach, leading by the pro-easable program manager to eliminate the almighty gate. It gives to the project manager a set of tangible objectives to take the preventive action to avoid the financial. Thanks Ivan for that. Let's jump into what MFT or multi-functional team has a little bit more. For APQB, it's all about coordination and collaboration. That's a big part of what APQB is and how that MFT really works together. Traditionally, the core of that multi-functional team is made up both supply chain, design engineering, me section engineering, quality and it's usually led by a project manager. With that said, how that team interacts together is really the importance of how and why APQB works as well as it does. For companies with mature development process, APQB can still help with companies that have repetitive failures in the cost and schedule and profit, because if they're using their existing procedures and they're still getting failures, APQP can be used to expose the hidden factories which are in the development process and remove silos within the company. Wonderful. Next question. BQB requires effort and focus. What value does APQB bring to small and medium-sized companies all small and medium-sized projects? Thank you for that question. One of the primary values that APQB brings that is a proactive approach that enables a project manager to use objective evidence as an early warning to program risk. Addressing those risks early in the development process is very valuable as addressing them early versus later as a big cost impact to the program. APQB is useful to any size and complexity of project because it is scalable. That's one of the big values of it as well. We can tailor the APQP process both in scope and content to based on the risk assessments that we do at the start of the project. What you say is very interesting to me because if I think to the small and medium-sized enterprises, I can say that they are quite ready to approach APQP because in principle there are already multifunctional approach and themes. They are flexible, they are quick in decision and changes. There are easy interconnections among their people and so on. So in some way I can say that small is effective, small is performing. There are also some challenges for small and medium enterprises because they may lack the resources. The small number of people inside a company can be a problem. The lack of skilled resources may be the difficulty to do important investments for doing some improvements and so we need to consider both aspects. But all these can be overcome because they can use a risk-bate approach and as we were saying before, APQP can be tailored, can be scaled to the activities which small and medium enterprises need to do. I think that the most important message is that APQP is not a monolithic stuff, it's not something unreachable for the small and medium enterprises. I really feel to suggest small and medium companies to make any efforts to approach APQP because they must feel that they have no limits with respect to the beginnest phase. Thank you Diana. I would like to bring another perspective from the big companies or complex projects. The companies face their own challenges in implementation of APQP. As those may have defined processes, they may have the skillset in their companies. However, often you see the multi-functional team working together, collaborating is a challenge. They often work in silos and what APQP brings this, those multi-functional teams collaborating, coordinating, together in order to a successful implementation. Another challenge what they face is about the accountability. As bigger the project, more number of stakeholders are in the team and it's difficult to pinpoint on who is going to be accountable for which kind of activities. So all in all what I would like to say is this is a cultural change and any size of company, any size of project is going to face challenge. However, we just have to help them in order to be successful implementation of APQP. So moving on to the next question. What is the difference or similarities between project management and 9145? Trashman Cal for this key question. Let's go to start by the meaning of APQPC. Get another vasocryl route. This is the meaning of the two first-notters with the best planning and this is the key word. The best is a placing quality and quality is not makes any reference to the quality department is make reference to get the best plan. By assessing the risk in advance with the approach and we say leading by the project manager to get the best planning in Sumerite, APQP gives the project management the final word to achieve the excellence. Even I really like a directronium AP best planning so I think that it's a very good sum up of the experience that there is behind this framework. But I would like to complement what this APQP and how it complements to existing project management practice and I would like to make it from the APQP principles perspective. APQP on the one hand is going to supplement to complement project management practice by strengthening the existing multi-functional team and enabling really to break the typical silos that we always see in complex projects. It also going to bring a detailed plan of critical activities and resources upfront meaning much earlier than usually we do with program management and also it's going to establish a set of early warnings that are going to provide us a detailed view of potential issues and that complements works very well hands on hands with his and opportunity management activity. Amalia I think that's I think that's perfect. Let me try to break down what you said a little bit more. You used the term strengthen the MFT or the multi-functional team. I think that's perfect and really that's all about synergies right and allowing a team to be in an environment where they can work together and share ideas openly. I think that's critical and a critical piece of APQP. You also mentioned early warning systems. A perfect example of that is the design failure mode effects analysis and the process failure mode effects analysis. We also know it was as DCM as in P-famous. That's the traditional approach that a lot of different industries use to identify risk, technical risk, early in a program is set of waiting for parts to be built and what that does is it provides the project manager and the entire IPT with measurable objective evidence that the project is on track or off track and they can then take action to resolve the issue or reduce the risk to the overall project to keep costs, schedule and profit on target. It answers. Moving on to the next one, what is in it for me as a project manager? Jeff, can please bring us something put on there? Sure, Pekka. That's a great question. I hear that question very many times from different sources. I've been a project program manager in multiple industries with diverse companies have different products and business structures. Really had that first hand experience of using APQP and experiencing the benefits of APQP. Besides the traditional pillars of scope management, schedule and cost, those APQP offers the improvement areas and so that's that is a few of the opportunities or things that are benefiting a project manager. I want to add a little depth to other areas that come to mind. I spoke earlier about the risk identification. Getting those risks exposed early in the process development and the product development process. We can address things we don't know or challenges that we have earlier the better and that is really APQP aids us in doing that. Another part is that comes to mind is the multi-functional approach. That's a core to project management is working in a collaborative cross-functional team that is able to have inputs from each function into the development process as we mature and had the completion of the program. One of the other top elements that comes to mind is driving incorporation of lessons learned where we can learn from many different sources. Part of it is what are the past products and processes yield? What are the challenges we've faced? It's also us taking account of what we're learning in our product design and our process design. There's organizational benefits for improving systems and procedures. Really as we go from one project to the next, it's taking those learnings and sharing those within our organization, really closing that learning cycle to have everyone benefit from what we want. And really all of that aids in our project execution or project performance. That's some of those things such as elements are improvements to safety, quality, delivery, and cost. Those are also big areas that APQP helps us in and all that leads to improved customer satisfaction. Thank you so much, Jeff, for sharing your experience and really talking to future project managers, program managers who are going to want to get input on this. 9145 is a quality driven activity or a project management driven activity? Thank you, thank you. I have a great question. We talked about the multi-functional team or the MFT a lot already today. And it's all about that team interacting and engaging together of the group and not relying on one person to stay in their lane or their silo, but taking down those silos. So with that said, quality is not the driver of APQP. They are instead an equal contributing member of that and again, I said earlier, traditionally, the MFT is made up of supply chain, design, manufacturing, quality, but it also can include anybody who touches the product from what we call cradle to graze or from the very start to the very end of the product. And then that can go all the way from things like finance, element analysis, with design engineering, all the way through the sustainment engineering, safety, operations, special process. All of people can be part of the MFT and add value, preventing problems on the front end instead of waiting for problems to happen on parts of bill. We would like to add further and explain more about how does this multifunctional team work together and how they can collaborate together. Just as an example, you have four people sitting in a room across the table and those represent engineering, the manufacturing engineering, quality and supply chain. Now imagine you are working on DFMEA. Same four people. Now the team is led by engineering and supported, collaborated by other three team members. Now once the DFMEA, when the time comes to create a PFD/PFMEA, the same team, the same people, but now the team is led by manufacturing engineering and other team members give their input to that. Same goes with control plan, quality is the leader where you get the inputs from manufacturing engineering and supply chain. And last, for supply chain, we often think that it's a supply chain responsibility and they should try to do it alone, but that's not the case. You still need identification of key characteristics. You still need to make sure that the supplier has the training, has the maturity, which so that you need the support from other team functions. So what I'm trying to say is APQP enables functions working together, bringing that the goodness goodness is there and it has responsible function identified for each and every deliverable supported by others. Yeah, that's the value of multi-functional team working together, collaborating together. Now moving on to the next question, how do we make small and medium-sized companies feel part of quality aerospace mindset? What I think you can do to support them? Oh, I would like to share my consideration with you on this topic. I like this question, because we have been discussing about APQP, the benefits of APQP and the listening to very technical information. But what I invite to underline is the aerospace mindset. So every every company and especially small and medium enterprises need to have an aerospace mindset to approach APQP. And this is something we just do with culture, with vision, and sometimes small companies don't feel comfortable with the application of a GQP. So, since it is not coming overnight, they cannot invent their aerospace mindset, they need to be supported from this point of view. I think in my opinion, they need to start sharing their ideas with their homologues, they need to do networking, they need to learn, they need to understand. So, in some way, they need to stop their isolation and respect the other companies, their customers, and the big industry. And I think that IAQG is the right place to start doing this, because they should discover what IAQG can also, where they need to start practicing with the tools. So, they need to start an interaction, because I strongly believe that the equality performance in the aerospace sector comes from the world supply chain. So, from the big industries to the small supplier, that's my opinion on that. And I would like to reinforce your message. Join to AQG is really important and being an active member. What is the meaning of that is using the SCMH, the supply chain manual handbook material using the training, participating in the different four range, and giving the feedback to issue that they are a space industry, keeping proof. We must to head quality of space mindset in the DNA of their companies. Good points. I would like also to emphasize the opportunity to use this platform, this platform that we are opening today, and we're different subject matter experts on APQP across the industry. And they can gather questions coming from different companies about ECUs, about programs, about how to get guidance, and they can answer back to you in order to further promote the implementation of APQP across the aerospace companies. That's fantastic. The next question, is it possible to provide a facilitator, a version of project management APQP for small and medium scale companies? I would like to get much opinion on that. Mark, would you like to share your thoughts? Real quickly, I'd like to say too, as well. I personally wasn't part of the development of this of this podcast, but I guess you could call me the first listener, if you will. The message you guys just put forward is incredible. Quite frankly, it is right on. It is right on. And it's one of the most critical messages we need to get across to people who have misconceptions about APQP being a quality processor, a quality tool. You guys are leading that chart, so I really appreciate that. But anyways, back to the question. So how can we get this into smaller companies? We're actually working right now, when I say where the IEQG is actually working right now with a partner, a third party training company. And by the way, the third party training company has been doing APQP training for many years in the automotive world. We just actually met with them last week in Orlando, and we're developing an aerospace specific train that's going to be all about APQP and the entire beginning section of this training. We were very careful to design this correctly. The entire beginning section of this training is going to be a brown program management project management. It's not till later in the training that we actually start talking the engineering tools. So we're going to try and take the message that you've just given and teach it. Now, the question itself was, how can this go into smaller companies? And that's a great question. And that was pretty much one of our number one goals of this training was developing actually a tiered cost structure. So the training itself is actually going to cost different depending on the size of the company. Because our main goal in this is actually to try and get this concept, these things you've just been talking about down to a very low tier three, tier four, tier five companies to really change the foundational culture of our industry. So you're actually going to see quite large discounts and price, depending on the size, depending on the size of the company to help achieve this. And that's it. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you so much, everyone. I really think we all learned so much from what you had to say in your different perspectives. This has been so educational and I have to say I do agree with Mark. You just all have a lot to offer on this topic. And the materials that you're all compiling really does touch every aspect of the industry and beyond to learn more about what this team is doing and the information that they are compiling and sharing with our industry. Please visit the SCMH at SCMH. IQG.org under the plan and management section. This is Susan Matson and you have been listening to the IQG quality horizon until next time. Stay safe. Thank you for tuning in to the quality horizon, a product of the International Aerospace Quality Group.