Q&A with the SCMH Project Management Team

Five project management groups can be seen over the lifecycle of a project, sequentially developed with a system approach (interaction and integration between technical and organizational variables): Initiate, Plan, Execute, Close, and Monitor and Control. In this episode, we invited the SCMH Project Management Team to discuss how this work aligns with the IAQG 9145 Standard and some of the frequently asked questions they have addressed: 

1.     Why this team was assembled

2.     If APQP is redundant to existing activities

3.     The value APQP brings to small/medium size companies or projects

4.     The similarities/differences between Project Management and 9145

5.     What part do Project Managers play in the 9145 standard

6.     If 9145 is Quality driven activity or project management-driven activity

7.     How the IAQG supports small and medium size companies 

8.     If it is possible to provide a facilitated version of APQP/PM for small and medium-scale companies new beginners

The Q&A is co-hosted by team lead Pankaj Deo, Associate Director - APQP Excellence, Collins Aerospace, an RTX Business. Pankaj is joined by fellow SCMH Project Management Team members:

·      Amalio Monzon, Head of Digital Quality for Airbus Defence and Space

·      Ivan Banegas, QPM System UK, Airbus Commercial

·      Geoff Charron, PMP/CMB/OE, Senior Business Operations Manager, Avionics for GE Aerospace

·      Doug Truesdail, Supplier Quality Engineering, East Region Major Commodities Lead, Air Vehicle & Mission Systems, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

·      Diana Giorgini, Aerospace & Defense Business Development Manager with ATLA

·      Marc Doolittle – IAQG PSCI Team Lead Raytheon Technologies

 This episode is only an excerpt of our conversation. To hear the full interview and see their published guidance materials, visit SCMH under the Plan topic  7.9 Project Management.  

 All opinions expressed by the participants in this interview do not reflect the opinions of their respective companies. The content provided is for informational purposes only.

Transcript

The Quality Horizon – SCMH Project Management Team  

[00:00:00]  

Susan Matson: Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the Quality Horizon. I'm your host, Susan Matson, 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. 

Susan Matson: In the room, we have the following members. Amalio Monzon, Head of Digital Quality for Airbus Defense and Space. Ivan Banegas QPM System UK, Airbus Commercial. Geoff Charron, PMP/CMB/OE, Senior Business Operation Manager, Avionics for GE Aerospace. Doug Truesdail, Supplier Quality Engineering, East Region Major Commodities Lead, Air Vehicle and Mission Systems for Lockheed Martin. And Diana Giorgini, Aerospace and Defense Business, Development Manager for Alta. 

Susan Matson: And then rounding out the group, I have Panchindeo with Collins [00:01:00] Aerospace, who will also be joining me today as our co-host. Welcome to the show, everyone. In this episode, we're going to dive into the work this team is doing with project management, APQP 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. 

Susan Matson: Mark, can you give our listeners a brief background on why the PSCI team chose to form this project team to create Project Management, APQB, alignment guidance materials.  

guest 1: With the increase in popularity of Advanced Product Quality Planning, APQB. The PSDI team, Product and Supply Chain Improvement team, moved a focus a little bit to the tools, the engineering tools of APQP. 

guest 1: We wanted to support the appetite for this new process that obviously is gaining greatly in popularity. The [00:02:00] realization of this came in the fact that APQP itself is not really an engineering process. The APQP process itself is really a new product introduction process that is designed to improve Our advanced product development by using quality planning.  

guest 1: Ie., advanced product quality planning, i.e., APQP. 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 people were thinking that this was an engineering process and that it was just a compilation of engineering tools, which is really incorrect. 

guest 1: It, at its heart, it's actually a program management process. So, the birth [00:03:00] of this team and obviously the increase in priority from the PSCI team for the proper execution of this team.  

Susan Matson: 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. 

Susan Matson: But thank you again for joining me as co-host. 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.  

guest 2: 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 APQP guidance material, we realized that we, there are some misconceptions existing, which Mark already talked about. 

guest 2: 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, to shed some [00:04:00] 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 the, get their opinion, get their feedback so that we can really provide this input to the industry and address those issues. 

Susan Matson: Wonderful. Let's get started.  

guest 2: The question. My company has a well established process for developing and industrializing products. Does APQP imply to be the redundant to the existing activities?  

guest 3: Many thanks, Pankaj, for the question, very appropriate. And I would like to start emphasizing that all companies aim for on quality, on time and on cost delivery and at the end for sure to achieve customer satisfaction. 

guest 3: However, we experience everything in the aerospace 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 a cost and also the [00:05:00] experience, the practical experience. So once that achieving this target is not always simple and many companies struggle to do. 

guest 3: The APGP basically came to complement the existing programmatic development and industrial processes in order to achieve this on quality, on time, on cost, this customer satisfaction and ultimately, and I will not say less important profitability, it will be key to really achieve a more profitable approach in our respective businesses. 

guest 4: You are really right, Amalio, because if we think about efficiency. Assessing the main risk and acting as multifunctional team approach, leading by the project or program manager to eliminate or mitigate it. It gives to the project manager a set of tangible objectives to take the preventive action to avoid the final. 

guest 5: Thanks Ivan for that. Let's jump into what MFT or multifunctional team as a little bit [00:06:00] more. For APQP it's all about coordination and collaboration. That's a big part of what APQP is and how that MFT really works together. Traditionally, the core of that multifunctional team is made up of supply chain, design engineering, manufacturing engineering, quality, and it's usually led by a project manager. 

guest 5: With that said, how those, how that team interacts together is really the importance of how and why APQP works as well as it does. For companies with mature development process, APQP can still help those companies that have repetitive failures in the cost and schedule and profit because they, if they're using their existing procedures and they're still getting failures. 

guest 5: APQP can be used to expose the hidden factories within the development process and remove silos within the company.  

guest 2: Wonderful. Next question. APQG requires effort and focus. What value does APQP bring to small and medium sized companies or small and medium sized projects?  

guest 6: Thank you for [00:07:00] 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. 

guest 6: Addressing those risks early in the development process is very valuable as addressing them early versus later has a big cost impact to the program. APQP 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. 

guest 6: And content to based on the risk assessments that we do at the start of the project,  

guest 7: Jeff, what you say is very interesting to me, because if I think to the small and medium enterprises, I can say that they are quite ready to approach APQP because in principle, there are already multifunctional approach and things [00:08:00] they are flexible. 

guest 7: 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, but 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. 

guest 7: 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 based approach. And As we were saying before, APQP can be tailored, can be scaled to the activities which small and medium enterprises companies need to do. 

guest 7: So I think that the most important message is that APQP is not a monolithic stuff. It's not something unreachable for the small [00:09:00] and medium enterprises. So 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 big industries. 

guest 2: Thank you, Diana. I would like to bring another perspective from big companies or complex projects. Big companies face their own challenges in implementation of APQP, as those may have defined processes, they may have the skill set in their companies. However, often you see the multifunctional team working together, collaborating is a challenge. 

guest 2: They often work in silos and what APQP brings is those multifunctional teams collaborating, coordinating together in order to a successful implementation. Another challenge 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, okay, who is going to be accountable for which [00:10:00] kind of activities. 

guest 2: 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? 

guest 4: For this key question, let's go to start by the meaning of APQPC. Get an advanced product. Okay, this is the meaning of the two first letters with the best planning. And this is the key word. The best is replacing quality and quality is not make say any reference to the quality department is make reference to get the best plan. 

guest 4: By assessing the risk in advance with the approach and we say leading by the project manager to get the best planning in summary, APQP [00:11:00] is the project management, the frame of work to achieve the excellence.  

guest 3: Ivan, I really like your acronym, AP best planning. So I think that is a very good sum up of the spirit that there is behind this framework. 

guest 3: But I would like to compliment what is 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 multifunctional and enabling really to break the typical silos that we always see in complex projects. 

guest 3: 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 [00:12:00] that are going to provide us a detailed view of potential issues. 

guest 3: And that complements works very well, we face an opportunity management activity.  

guest 5: Amalio, 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 multifunctional team. I think that's perfect. And really, that's all about synergies, right? 

guest 5: And allowing a team. Be in an environment where they can work together and share ideas openly. I think that's critical and a critical piece of APQG. You also mentioned early warning systems. A perfect example of that is the Design Failure Modes Effects Analysis and the Process Failure Modes Effects Analysis. 

guest 5: We also know those as DFMEAs’ and PFMEA’s. That's the traditional approach that a lot of different industries use to identify risk, technical risk, early in a program instead of waiting for parts to be built. And what that does is it provides the project manager and the entire IP team with [00:13:00] 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.  

guest 2: Great answers, moving on to the next one. What is in it for me as a project manager, Jeff, can you please bring us some input on that?  

guest 6: Sure. Pankaj. That's a great question. I hear that question very many times from different sources. I've been a project and program manager in multiple industries with diverse companies, have different products and business structures, really had that firsthand experience of using APQP and experiencing the benefits of APQP. 

guest 6: Besides the traditional pillars of scope management, schedule and cost, those APQP offers the improvement areas in those. So that's, that is a few of the [00:14:00] opportunities or things that are benefiting a project manager. I wanted 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. 

guest 6:  So, we can address things we don't know or challenges that we have earlier, the better. And that is, is really APQP aids us in doing that. Another part is the, that comes to mind is the multifunctional approach.  

guest 6: That's a, that's the 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 head to 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 [00:15:00] sources. 

guest 6: Part of it is what, what have our 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. And 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, to have everyone benefit from what we've learned and really all of that aids in our project execution or project performance. 

guest 6: 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.  

guest 2: Thank you so much, Jeff, for sharing your experience and really talking to [00:16:00] future project managers, program managers who are going to want to get input on this. 

guest 2: So moving on to the next question, 9145 is a quality driven activity or a project management driven activity.  

guest 5: Thanks, Pankaj. Another great question. We've talked about the multifunctional team or the MFT a lot already today, and it's all about that team interacting and engaging together as a group. And not relying on one person to stay in their lane or their silo, but taking down those silos. 

guest 5: So, with that said quality is not the driver of APQG, 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 and quality, but it also can include anybody who touches the product from what we call cradle to grave or from the very start to the very end of the product. 

guest 5: And that can go all the way from things like, find an element analysis with design engineering, all the way [00:17:00] through the sustainment engineering, safety operations, special process. All those people can be part of the MFT and add value, preventing problems on the front end, instead of waiting for problems to happen when parts are built. 

guest 2: 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. 

guest 2: 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, to create a PFD PFMEA. Same two the same team, the same people. But now the team is led by manufacturing, engineering, and other team members [00:18:00] give their input to that. 

guest 2: Same goes with control plan. Quality is the leader where you get the input 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. 

guest 2: You still need to make sure that the supplier has the training has the maturity, which you, 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 is there, and it has responsible function identified for each and every deliverable supported by others. 

guest 2: Yeah. That's the value of multifunctional team working together, collaborating together. Now moving on to the next question, how to, how do we make small and medium sized companies feel part of [00:19:00] quality aerospace mindset? What IAQG can do to support them?  

guest 7: Oh, I would like to share my consideration with you on this topic. 

guest 7: I like this question because we have been discussing about APQP, the benefits of APQP and listening to very technical information, but what I would like to underline is the aerospace mindset. So every company, and especially small and medium enterprises need to have an aerospace mindset to approach APQP. 

guest 7: And this is something which has to do with culture, with vision, and sometimes small companies don't feel comfortable with the application of APQP. Since this is not coming overnight, they cannot invent their own space mindset, they need to be supported from this point of view. And so I think, in my opinion, they need to start sharing their ideas with their homologues. 

guest 7: They need to do networking, they need to [00:20:00] learn. They need to understand. So in some way, they need to stop their isolation in respect to the other companies, their customers, and the big industries. And I think that IAQG is the right place to start doing this because they should discover what IAQG can offer. 

guest 7: They need to start practicing with the tools. So they need to start an interaction because I strongly believe That a quality 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.  

guest 4: Yeah. And I would like to reinforce your message, join to AQG is really important and being an active member. 

guest 4: What is the meaning of that is using SCMH, the manual handbook material, using the training, participating in the different [00:21:00] forums and giving the feedback to be sure that they the space industry keep improve. We must to get quality aerospace mindset in the DNA of their companies.  

guest 3: Good points. I would like also to emphasize the opportunity to use this platform. 

guest 3: This platform that we are opening today and where different subject matters personally could be across the industry. Can receive can gather questions coming from different companies about issues about tolerance, 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. 

guest 2: That's fantastic. So the next question, is it possible to provide a facilitator version of project management, APQP for small and medium scale companies? I would like to get Mark's opinion on that. Mark, would you like to share your thoughts  

guest 1: real quickly? I'd like to say [00:22:00] 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. 

guest 1: 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 process or a quality tool. You guys are leading that chart. So I really appreciate that. 

guest 1: But anyways, back to the question. So how can we get this into smaller companies? We're actually working right now. When I say we're, the IAQG 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. 

guest 1: 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, a section of this training is going to be around program management, project [00:23:00] management. 

guest 1: It's not till later in the training that we actually start talking to engineering tools. So we're going to try and take the message that you've just given and teach it. 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. 

guest 1: 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. 

guest 1: So you're actually going to see quite large discounts in price, depending on the size, depending on the size of the company to help achieve this.  

guest 2: Fantastic thank you so much, Mark.  

Susan Matson: 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. 

Susan Matson: 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@SCMH.iaqg.org under the plan management section. This is Susan Matson, and you have been listening to the IAQG Quality Horizon. Until next time, stay safe.