EMSE 6805

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Assignment

One

Background

You have

been

identified as the lead

Systems Engineer (

SE

)

and placed

in a

Program Management O

ffice (PMO)

to correct and get an ailing

program back on track. The effort has already been re

-

baselined multiple

times but still continues to suffer technical & cost issues and to a lesser

degree schedule pressure

.

You have brought in your team of SE experts

to assess

and recommend to the

program

manager if this program should

be cancelled or continued

and of course why or why not.

Scenario

This is a three (3) year contract awarded to your firm by large

automotive manufacturer. Originally

this was a two (2) phase effort to a)

mature a technology and b) get it ready for production. Specifically, this

was regarding to a new versatile hydrogen fuel cell engine to be used in

a wide line of automobiles. This was originally a $25

-

million

-

dollar

e

ffort but has swelled to $50M and the bleeding hasn't stopped.

The first issue occurred during qualification of the fuel cell 'stack' or the

heart of the engine. The qualification samples were having low yield

rates and your firm couldn't get adequate par

ts in for testing. The stacks

are made by another vendor and the low yield rates couldn't be

explained or root caused because the sample set was too low. They

stated that similar prior runs had much higher yield rates and the only

way to identify root caus

e is to run more stacks. This takes considerable

time (4

-

5 months) and additional funding.

You have about 30 parts and

you need 50. There are 30 additional ones that have yet go through

testing, but you believe that those too will have the same problem.

T

he issues continued when your firm tried to mount the 30 good parts.

There were several workmanship issues. In some issues areas were

grounded that shouldn't have been and re

-

work is necessary to correct

the problem. Re

-

work isn't risk free and there is a

chance of damaging

the good stacks when you try to remove them. One of the areas also

suffered an ESD event, but that has since been corrected with a new

EMSE 6805

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Assignment

One

HVAC system. The ESD event was due to low humidity.

Because of these issues you haven't been able to

run a full suite of

testing to see how good horsepower and fuel economy will be. However,

the initial results were very encouraging and already showed orders of

magnitude improvement over legacy designs. This is exactly what the

large automotive manufactur

er is looking for. These positive results

have kept the team going and maintained morale.

Your Firm

Is an established large corporation with solid PM

a

nd SE

practices. They

are fairly high level but none the less they are in place and do a good job

at bounding

corporate procedures. The PM on this effort to

-

date has

been only part time

as have the lead SE

. This is still seen as a somewhat

minor project for your company and since no production contract was

awarded, a part time unexperienced PM was assigned to cut costs.

Additionally, there aren

'

t many tailo

red SE

processes

such as risk and

schedules and most are at a high level from the corporate firm.

Additionally,

areas in systems engineering were also underfunded.

We

'

re not even sure how much money was spent on SE.

Given your

firms vast resources, a lot of matrixed support was pulled from other

areas in a part

-

time

setting. Your org structure has been heavily matrixed

with few overall de

dicated people to this effort alone.

You are on a cost

plus award fee contract with this vendor. You haven't been getting any

award fee because of your performance and have been submitting cost

overrun proposals as they come in and asking for performance

e

xtensions. Thus far, all have been granted, but you believe the customer

is wary and is considering cancelling the effort.

Path Forward

Although this is just one project, your firm's credibility is on the line.

Having an effort cancelled by the customer

is a bad for publicity. At the

same time, this isn't a large project for your firm but if this goes into

production, you will naturally be sole sourced and long term lucrative

EMSE 6805

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Assignment

One

revenue is all but guaranteed.

Your job is to formulate a recommendation to the

seniors as to the best

course of action. Do we abandon this effort and save face or continue

with a new course of action?

You are expected to provide an executive summary

(5

-

10 pages)

report

to corporate seniors. Although questions and discussions could be raised,

this report is expected to stand on it

'

s own be self supported. All

assumptions, facts, inputs, outputs, analysis, etc should be identified.

The report should first and foremost be accurate but also professional in

appearance.

The seniors would at a

minimum

like to know the following:

1.

How did we get here?

2.

What were the biggest issues that caused these overruns?

3.

Where are we in the project

lifecycle

? What phase?

4.

Did we have process issues? If so, which ones.

5.

Did we follow solid SE / PM guidelines

? Why and why not?

6.

What are the biggest risks facing the effort moving forward? What

is he best course of

mitigation?

7.

If we do move forward, what is the get well plan? What changes

and corrective actions

do y

ou recommend implementing.

8.

How do we propose this to the customer?

9.

Is this a win

-

win situation?