PROJECT TYPE
Professional,
Team of 2
CONTRIBUTION
Plan and lead all process steps. Report and update project manager and the CTO on findings. Map steps of the new process with the process excellence team.
DURATION
3 months
December 2018- May 2019
Problem definition
When I started my internship most of the teams were working hard on handling engineering change requests however they was lack of collaboration in general across different teams. A huge number of bugs were coming in daily, however a lack of communication and a process to follow resulted in bugs lying unresolved for months on end.
. Moreover the changes were usually made based on an engineer's expertise rather than after a thorough root cause analysis.
Delays in production and incorrect handling of these request were therefore costing the company time and money.
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Objective:
1. Establish a process to handle on road and production bugs and change requests on the the electric scooters.
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2. Verify the viability of the newly designed process by taking the bug on the side stand through the entire BUG-ECR-ECN process.
Team Size : 4 people
My role :
CAD Design ,Concept Generation, FMEA,
Interviews, analysis, and process design
Duration: 4 months
Need Definition
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Ather needed a process defined that clearly defined roles, responsibilities and steps of picking a bug, define the engineering change request to resolve and register the final change in the project management software, JIRA, which is used across the organization.
Process Followed: DMAIC
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1. Define
In the define phase we spoke to people handling ECRs across teams to get an idea of the activities, roles and artefacts required from the various departments to handle any BUG, raise an ECR on it and finally obtain an Engineering Change Number.
We called this the AS-IS process and made all our improvements based on it.
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2. Measure
Using JIRA, the project planning tool used in the company, all the ECRs previously received were traced to find the time spent in each process step in the AS-IS process.
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Most ECRs were taking over 2 months ( )
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We picked one of these ECRs and called a Focus Group meeting with everyone involved to ask What on earth happened?
A lot of problems surfaced that were never taken into account before.
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Veerappan
(Component Owner)
Aneesh PK
(Operations)
Finds it difficult to use JIRA
His timelines do not match with timelines of other departments on JIRA making it difficult to co-ordinate
No Catia integration on TC
Took a month for design signoff as stakeholders just didn't have the time to approve
While status says ECR released, it actually hasn't been as drawings have to be revised first
Decision making with other stakeholders took the most amount of time
Continues to receive ECRs though his responsibilities have shifted elsewhere
Found it difficult to know priority of ECR without clear deadlines
Tool designs are never modified
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Readability of drawings aren't up to the mark
We also went over the AS-IS process with the process owners such as New Product Development, PVL and Vehicle Engineering teams to note down which step in the AS-IS process was considered as a risk by them
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3. Analyse
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We started with an RCA to find the root causes.
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We attempted a 5 Why analysis but due to the diverse nature of the critical causes the stakeholders couldn’t go beyond the first 2 WHYs.
Hence we took up each critical cause and interviewed the responsible for it
For example, one of the biggest problems faced by the engineers raising an ECR was the fact that it took Stakeholders from Program, PVL, NPD etc. weeks to comment so we interviewed at least one stakeholder from each team we found out WHY they weren’t commenting as soon as they saw an ECR.
Solutions
4. Improve
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We identified critical problems in the process and brainstormed solutions
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Ensure timely sign-off for ECR approval
Auto assignment of target dates ( 72 hrs)
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Assign task notifications in Jira /email and move task into JIRA TO-DO list
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Assignment responsibility matrix of stake holders so that an engineer knows who to assign an ECR to after working on it
Program should check quality of comments and give the final approval
Mark up drawing of the engineering change must be provided by engineers to NPD for tool development
Program manager to drive swimlane.
This will part of the ECR-ECN workflow in Jira, prior to raising an ECR
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For change approval CCB needs more information
Critical Problems
They as well as JIRA will be updated so as to not allow raising two ECR's for same part number with same revision before the open one is closed.
They as well as JIRA will be updated so as to not allow raising two ECR's for same part number with same revision before the open one is closed.
Ensure timely design sign-off
No of tasks required at this stage can br reduced from 22 to 11 and all can lie with one person (the designer)
Manual sign of in sheet to be eliminated
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​Process can be modified to automatically move to the next step post approval of the aforementioned 11 tasks
Stakeholders shouldn't be assigned for the sake of it. Limited by backend on JIRA.
Then, we mapped a new BUG to ECR process (seen below) that tackled all the problems raised and the solutions decided on. Two of us sat with a developer to make all the backend changes required on JIRA.
We spoke to all teams to understand who was the right person to assign a particular kind of ECR to and drafted a dynamic
Assignment Matrix available as a help button on the ECR forms that designers fill.
5. Control
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The process would be in its control phase for about 6-8 months with supporting process development, JIRA modifications and trainings conducted on the process to verify its viability.
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As a part of my project, I also took a bug that had been raised on the scooter's sidestand and observed it go through the new process for any hiccups or changes that might be required.
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It proved to be useful as the JIRA changes made required a couple of revisits and the Process Excellence team worked with our in house expert, Mr. Deepak to ensure successful flow of the process on JIRA.
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