I've worked with engineers and engineering managers that seem to believe schedule is not one of their responsibilities. Actually, many seem to believe their responsibilities are strictly "technical", and that cost and schedule are either beneath them, or someone else's problem. That's not what I was taught in school. I was taught that cost and schedule were part of the design problem. And that as engineers, our job is to solve problems. The complete problem, not just the "technical" or "interesting" parts.
Was my school unique? What were you taught, and what has been your experience in the industry? Should engineers manage their own cost and schedule, or leave that up to someone else?
7 comments:
My school taught it the same way. I think a lot of engineers shy away from scheduling and costs because they are uncomfortable with the concepts or don't fully understand them. Or maybe it is more stress than they are willing to deal with. I believe, as you do, that cost and schedule are part of the design considerations. I'm sure all of us could design the near perfect part with unlimited time and budget, but the real world dictates that we consider these variables.
I've experienced engineering managers that pay little attention to the schedule and others that hammer on meeting scheduled commitments at all costs. I think there is a compromise position in between that is not always easy to find. That being said, I think engineering managers need to realize that and work towards it, spreading the culture through their orgs. It would also help if engineers were informed of the costs and schedule impacts that result from their actions. This would lead to a much better understanding of how each engineering hour and each late design impacts the bottom line of the company.
I graduated from an engineering university four years ago, and I don't ever remember hearing about schedule and costs. Unfortunately this was never part of our assignments and it should've been. I believe all engineers would benefit from knowing this type of information. In fact I would love to have access to a site or manual that listed material costs, leadtime, and availability. Something like that would let all engineers better contribute to the bottom line.
I had very little instruction on schedule at the university level. It must be recognized that scheduling is vital to the success of a new program. I would recommend the following guidelines to create a good schedule.
It should be detailed. Having lots of details and subtasks to the major parts and installations will allow you to track progress better. It’s hard to tell whether a 200-hour job is on track without having the detailed steps listed. There's nothing worse than finding out on a due date that the engineer is a month behind. I'd suggest having weekly progress milestones.
It should have all predecessors listed. If you are waiting on loads, methods, or a design layout, then show that. When held for one of these items, the end dates should be adjusted too. If you get new loads or methods in the middle of the design process, take the schedule back to the start date.
Allow plenty of time for review and corrections. People make mistakes, so make sure you allow lots of time for checking and rework. How many sizing mistakes on your last program were made due to lack of oversight? Trust me, it may seem like a waste of time at first, but catching errors is imperative. If any defects are passed down through the IPT, the cost of that mistake skyrockets.
Build the schedule from the left to the right. Don't let manufacturing hog up all of the padding in the schedule and leave you with no time to do the job. As we've seen over and over, schedules are built from the right to the left, and each group in the chain gets compressed more. Then it's just a domino effect. Interfaces/loads are late. Stress is late because they are understaffed, compressed, received loads late, or all of the above. Design is late because they get sizing late, and so on. Better to plan for this from the beginning and build a realistic schedule.
There is some excellent and very encouraging feedback on this post. I'm glad to hear that there are other engineers that have been taught that schedule and cost are part of the design parameters. And I'm just as encouraged to hear that the ones that weren't taught that in school would like to learn how to do it.
I noted in particular the recommendations to demonstrate the need, and the impact to downstream customers. That was something that I had already been thinking about. I'm going to be giving a presentation on this subject later this year, and I've got a couple of crazy ideas on how to communicate this to an audience that might not be as interested in the subject as the people reading this blog.
I also appreciate the feedback on how to construct a schedule. It's nice to hear an engineer acknowledge that the only way to build a schedule is to have enough detail to really know what is required. I've had some pretty disturbing conversations with engineers in the past who were truly offended at the idea of putting a schedule together to track their work. I'm not sure how we developed such a prima donna attitude that we think that rudimentary business principles don't apply to us. I know we like our paychecks to come out on time, but for some reason we sometimes think our schedules are optional is we have a degree in engineering.
Anyway, excellent discussion! Thank you.
Schedule vs Quality vs Cost
The way it was explained to me years ago. There are 3 factors in a program: schedule, cost and quality and only 1 of the 3 can be the priority.
Schedule: if you have a good schedule with enough time you can control cost and quality.
Cost: if cost is s factor the schedule did not have enough time or schedule was not managed properly.
Quality: if quality is poor it affects schedule and cost.
So if you have a good schedule that is thought out withthe right people. You can produce a good quality product while controlling cost.
I have worked as an engineer at Boeing, Spirit and Lockheed Martin on new programs. From my point of view the #1 reason that impacts schedule is management or mismanagement. # 2 reason is not having the right people involved when the schedule is being made.
Speaking from an engineers point of view.
I don’t recall learning much about cost and schedule in college, however, it has been over 25 years. Regardless, I do know that successful engineering design is a result of a good balance between the design, cost and schedule. I feel engineers need to have more information about cost aspects of the design and to a lesser extent, schedule (like the effect of it on cost). We need good information in order to make good decisions.
I joined this program after it was somewhat underway. The first thing I looked for was the schedule. I’m still looking for one; I haven’t found it yet.
In the early stages of a program like this the people who will be the leads and managers of the Design and Stress groups need to put some effort into developing a master schedule. Design needs to include all the basic structures and a timetable for their drawing releases. The sequence obviously needs to be logical. Don’t release brackets before designing the structure that they mount to.
Then Stress needs to create a schedule that supports the drawing release schedule. The Stress schedule needs to show how long each task will take and how many people are assigned to it. It should show when the job needs to be completed and when it needs to be started and allow for checking and doing corrections. That way it is possible to know at any point how many people are needed and if the work is on schedule or falling behind. Any schedule will need to undergo changes over time, but it can’t completely flip flop or it’s worthless.
This program suffered tremendously from not having a well defined schedule. We never knew what was coming next or if we were in a position to be able to make the required volume of releases. Having someone yelling “you need to release more drawings this month” does not constitute a schedule.
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