Assignments and resources
At GGEC we begin after the award of a project, a process where we select your team. Each member of the team is accountable for deliverables through each stage of the process. There are the core members, you the customer, and at GGEC program manager, sales representative and the engineer. The listed deliverables are accomplished step by step. Each phase of a program as listed must be completed and approved before moving on to the next phase. This assures each process is completed correctly, and minimizes going backward. Therefore knowing the scope at the onset of a project assures a speedy process to market
Schedule
Once the program is established we will meet with you the customer to determine your time to market needs. Once this is established we move forward to creating a schedule that will be shared with all team members. Our program management will work very closely with the customer to determine the customer associated tasks, and combine those tasks with the product development tasks to ensure a timely outcome. Heavy planning in the early stages of a program ensures a timely on schedule outcome. While we at GGEC will be responsible for our milestones, it will also be clearly identified as to the customer’s deliverables to ensure schedule adherence. Customer tasks will be clearly identified to display what GGEC tasks are dependant on customer tasks.
While a task sheet is used to cover objectives and tasks for communication, constant communication via the schedule is important to ensure full knowledge by the team as a whole as to the progress of the project, and if there are timing problems, proactive questions and communication and approaches can be deployed
Preliminary Product Definition
A product cannot be developed successfully on time unless the team is fully aware of the needs of the product. This is termed as performance and cost analysis. The Customer and GGEC go into product design meetings to make decisions on performance desired by the customer to successfully market the product. This would involve the customer’s marketing and engineering team. This is an early stage process whereas between the customer and GGEC we work through the needs and features so a preliminary BOM can be created to ensure cost targets are met. It is useless to develop a product unless both sides are fully disclosed as to the performance versus price goals. This avoids loss of time to “go back to the drawing board” if there is a cost issue that takes the product over the cost targets.
This also serves as a valuable tool for the customer’s Marketing, Engineering and Executive staff to be fully disclosed as to the product to be developed and what challenges if any may lie ahead.
Cost versus Performance – Benchmarking cost
Once a preliminary Product spec is agreed upon by the Customer and the GGEC team, we can then move forward with a preliminary bill of materials. From here the process lets both the customer and the team evaluate where the performance versus cost benchmark is. In this process we estimate the cost of the product line items, create estimates as to the cost of production, shipping, and landing in your warehouse. Therefore this allows the customer to see what the actual cost of goods are once received so a true gross margin can be determined. In the event the customer’s gross margin is not meeting their targets, then the team can review the line items versus performance spec and make the appropriate adjustments necessary to meet the customer’s gross margin objectives.
Summary
Proper planning and good project management saves time and ensures a trouble free product development process. At GGEC with our upfront planning and project management we can ensure that the customer meets all their objectives on time and on target. This process eliminates the surprises at the end of a project.
This process allows the customer’s team and the GGEC team to be working as one to bring your products to market
