Large-scale industrial projects such as the development of a new braking system are impressively complex: they consist of hundreds of often heterogeneous sub-projects and sub-sub-projects with countless dependencies, each of which must be meticulously monitored, analyzed, approved and documented. But how can comprehensive planning and fulfillment control with end-to-end documentation be achieved without complicated Excel lists? This requires a user-friendly project management system that maps all review and approval processes digitally and in multiple stages right from the start.
Whether the specification of a new system meets the customer’s requirements is monitored and resolved as part of critical design reviews (CDRs) for major projects. The CDRs ensure that the planned product or service meets the performance requirements. This takes into account technical conditions, costs, schedule and risk. A CDR consists of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individual questions, each of which must be answered in a sustainable manner and documented in a comprehensible manner.
A typical use case for large-scale industrial projects is the development of a new braking system. A project of this size is subdivided into a large number of sub-projects, each of which undergoes a critical design review. The respective worklist of a CDR is available in the form of task and open item lists, which are processed one after the other in different areas. For example, if the material density has been checked satisfactorily in area A, the material flexibility is then checked in area B, and so on. Corresponding lists, which are often created in Excel in a very complicated way, often comprise hundreds of processes and activities, including queries to other departments or organizations. With so much complexity, the global view of the project is quickly lost.
Structuring and controlling the individual CDRs via a project management system has proven to be ideal in various use cases. The CDRs are created and managed as digital checklists within the system. And thanks to the support of multi-level workflows, they can be assigned to different areas for processing. This enables comprehensive planning and fulfillment control of all sub-project-related activities from a central dashboard, including sustainable and traceable documentation of each individual work step.
While conventional Excel lists can be useful for smaller projects, this is no longer the case as projects grow in size. Here, digital checklists have proven to be a flexible tool for recording, evaluating and documenting a huge number of tasks and questions (catalogs) as part of individual audits. A new project is created for each CDR process, which is subdivided into sub-projects. Associated tasks and activities are recorded in digital checklists. The checklists can be structured thematically and organized hierarchically in the individual projects. Once the checklist has been completed, it is finalized. All individual steps are then already digitally available and can be transferred to other IT systems such as reporting, ERP/SAP etc. at any time. The overall view of the project becomes clear. Complicated Excel lists are a thing of the past. This also makes it easier to search for detailed information at a later date.
If questions remain unanswered when processing the digital task lists, the user will find an open item list at the end of the checklist, the points of which flow directly into a ticket system. The tickets are forwarded to the responsible departments for processing. Here, too, checklists are generated which are used to check whether the items have been processed satisfactorily. Once this has been done, the feedback flows back into the higher-level checklist. Various reports can be generated on all activities, whereby corporate design specifications are also taken into account.
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Christoph Schiffer
Sales Team Germanedge