Product family master plan

Developed by Daniel Vorting

Abstract

When rationalizing or developing a new range of product projects (a platform), it is essential to get an overview of the entire product program. An overview should “describe the structure of the product family and the variety with in the product family”

This article clarifies how a platform manager in charge of a product family rationalization or development projects, can benefit from using a product family master plan (PFMP). The PFMP is a tool for visualizing a complete product family, and how customer specified requirements impact the product family. The PFMP describes the product family from three different perspectives – the customer view, the engineering view and the part view. A product family project manager can utilize this overview when deciding on how and where project resources should be focused. The PFMP overview yields a practical insight into where product modules should be developed, that can benefit the entire program of product projects depending on customer requirements.

The process of developing a PFMP is dependent on a 7-step process, which guides and serves as a facilitator of discussion within the group. This forces the team to agree and have a common understanding on product terminology, product systems, modules etc. which in return greatly enhances communication between both team members and the project manager. The PFMP’s credibility is highly depended on the correctness of product details which is why it is of high importance, that it is developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, that bring important product knowledge to the table.

Purpose of article

The purpose of this article is to give a thorough insight into the possibilities and limitations of the PFMP as a tool for communication of similarity and variance. A program managers can use the proposed 7-step method to understand the similarity and individual variance of his product projects. The PFMP has mainly been used on product projects, but can in theory be applied on all kinds of projects without altering the approach.

Background and application

Structure of this article

• The first section of the article will discuss the theory supporting the PFMP as a tool for program management. The theory is separated into 3 different sup-areas, which contribute to the holistic understanding of the PFMP. Firstly the theory behind project communications management will be adressed, secondly the theory of platform management and lastly the theory revolving program management.
• The second section will account for the 7-step process of developing a PFMP. The process steps will be presented with details on actual execution along with reflections on pitfalls, scoping, and general assumptions.
• The third section will describe the usability of the PFMP as a communication artifact, hereunder the limitations it holds under actual application and practical use.

Definitions and terminology

• Platform management is defined as a way to solve the "fat design" problem and maximize partial commonalities and efficient technology transfer across projects
• Product project is defined as a
• Best of breed is an abbreviation which is used when discussing whether one solution is better than another at solving a specific functional requirement. The best of breed is the solution, that based on analytical insight, gives the best performance measured on company KPI's.

Theory

Project communications management

According to PMI 28% of projects fail due to poor communication and it is by far the biggest contributor to failing projects, as shown on figure 1. Every project needs effective direction, management, control and communication and the maintenance of these are essential to the project's success. As an essential part of the PRINCE2 approach, an effective approach to manage communication flows to and from stakeholders is one of 4 essentials, that a successful management team should incorporate. A substantial part of developing good communications thus lies in ensuring that information flows to the involved project members as well as its stakeholders. This information flow is met through "development of artifacts and implementation of activities designed to achieve effective information exchange" .

Project learnings

A large number of firms and organizations use projects to achieve strategic and operational objects. In order to make these projects competitive it is important that projects learn from previous projects.

Platform management theory

A platform is an multiproject management approach where the objective is to identify and use the commonality between different projects - be it product development projects, process optimization projects or any other type of project. The benefits lies within the fact, that through re-use of product or process commonalities we do not have to 're-invent the wheel' each time we are starting a new project. This enables the company to achieve both cost reduction and market competition effects through offering a larger diversity of products to the customers . Often products are separated into two domains; the design-to-order products (e.g. a cement factory) and the mass produced products (e.g a car). In a project management context, the design-to-order products are similar to the projects 'exploratory learning' when the company experiments with new project practices required to cope with unfamiliar activities. Projects are generally really good at exploring what customers want but bad at exploiting what the company already knows. In the other domain a series of conservative product manufacturers often utilize their knowledge on mass production to produce thousands of non-customer specific products. The strength of platform management in a project context lies in exploiting the knowledge we have already gained and exploring the fields in which we have no prior experience. By

7-step process to developing a PFMP

The development of the PFMP can be broken down into 7 steps, that should be followed chronologically:

1. Establish common terminology
2. The customer view
3. The engineering view
4. The part view
5. The part sharing matrix
6. Attributes
7. Cardinallity