Action Plan for Transition

Discuss about the Linking Project Management Performance And Project.

The main goal of the program is to increase the productivity and considerably reduce the waste associated with the manufacturing process in order to improve the sustainability and error reduction in the production lines. Furthermore, the program aims at reducing the staff’s which is on an average is 32% per annum to 20% per annum. This aims at improving the skills levels and the efficiency of the firm by reducing the cost of recruitment and training of the new staffs. Reducing the employees’ turnover will only be possible by increasing the job satisfaction of the employees.

In order to achieve the set goal, the authorities have decided to divide the workers into five different teams. These teams will be responsible for manufacturing of five different product lines. This will ensure that each team is working on their specialty line only. This roster will be altered timely in order to enable every staffs to work on different lines.

In order to make the regular work more interesting John the production manager of the firm has suggested the teams to work in a particular goal or objective that is set for a particular product line. This goal will be based on reducing the error rate to only 4% from a rate of 22%. Along with this, it is essential that the productivity of the firm to be increased by 40% within 24 months.

The main activity of the program further includes the closing of the production lines for 48 hours. This time is needed for re tooling. The activities of re tooling include staff retraining. The retraining process will incorporate technical training, motivational training, training on quality control along with clear definition of goal and objectives. This will help in reducing the error in the production and manufacturing work and will keep the staffs and employees motivated as well.

The main objective of the transition is to redesign the production and the manufacturing process. This will help in increasing the productivity of the firm. Waste reduction is further essential for which it is essential to design an error free product. The objective of this program is to reduce the error lines up to 20% in order to reduce the sustainability.

The firm has seen quite a huge number of employee losses in recent years. Therefore the secondary objective of the program is to reduce the staff turnover from a rate of 32% per annum to 20% per annum. This objective aims at reducing the costs of recruiting and training of new staffs every year.

Activities of Transition

Another significant objective of this program is to close the production lines for 48 hours for retooling. In this period, the staffs will be retrained in order to improve their skills and knowledge.

The key performance indicators of the program will be reduction in the error rate in order to reduce the wastes associated with the manufacturing process. The current error rate is 22% which must be reduced to 4% for improving the sustainability of the organization. The staff workers are divided into five teams in order to ensure that each work supervised by them is done with perfection. Since a team will be working on a single speciality line, it would be easier for them to manage the production works. The rosters that are keeping a track of the team members will be altered on a regular basis in order to ensure that each member of the organization are getting to work on every speciality line.

Therefore the key performance indicator or the measures of the success of the transition would definitely be the reduction in the error rates, the increase in the production and reduction of the wastes and reduction in the employee turnover after a timeline of 24 months.

In order to improve the efficiency of the team members, each team member is allocated a team and the team will be responsible for manufacturing of five product lines. The rosters for the teams will be altered during a 12-hour shift. The main objective of the program is to reduce the error rates and increase in the productivity by bringing certain modifications in the process. Fir this, a time frame of 24 months is set. Furthermore in order to bring certain modifications in the process the production lines will remain closed for a time frame of 48 hours in order to provide certain essential training to the staffs. This training program is expected to improve the skills and knowledge of the workers that is essential in order to increase the productivity.

The employees will be trained and motivated in order to increase their interest in the job and reduce the employee turnover.

In order to reduce the negative impact on the people, a feedback path was established in order to review the perspectives of the workers associated with the new transition.

The activities of the communication include regular follow up with the employees and staffs in order to understand their views about the implementation of new process.

Objectives of the transition

The objective of the communication is to improve the productivity of the employees by keeping them motivated and assigning them with a particular speciality line to work with.

The key performance indicator for the communication plan includes increase in the jiob satisfaction of the employees and reduction in employees’ turnover.

The activities that are undertaken in order to promote the process and regular sustainability are to arrange regular meetings so that the issues of the employees are addressed.

In order to ensure that the transition and communication has no negative impact on people, it was ensured that regular follow up with the members of a particular speciality line is taken.

One of the significant implementation uses is that the workers may not be interested in the process and might feel bored about managing a particular speciality line. This might in turn reduce the production by a considerable amount. As a contingency plan, the employees can be motivated to set a realistic goals and not lectured about their mistake. A proper leadership should be ensured in order to make the implementation successful.

Another implementation issue that can be faced is that the expected ROI does not match as the timeframe for all the reforms is too short.

As a contingency plan, it is suggested that the economic feasibility and NPV of the implementation of the transition project is done before the project initiation.

The review was done after eight weeks and the issues and failures of the new program are as follows-

1. Reduction in production by 8% instead of expected increase
2. Increase in delays and wastes by 10%
3. 15 staffs have resigned.

After 16 weeks it was reviewed once again, the issues include-

1. No improvement in production
2. No reduction in error rates

The failures of the new program includes-

1. Insufficient training on handling of the new machines
2. The staffs are not clear about the goals and objectives of the program
3. the workers have no idea how to apply sustainable practised to the workplace
4. A longer shift of 12 hours resulting in people becoming too tired to work
5. The tiredness and lack of rest of the workers increases the chances of accidents.

The amendments in the action plan are as follows-

1. The training of 48 hours were too less and therefore another training program should be planned.
2. Since the workers have very little knowledge of English the specifications of the machine should be properly communicated to them along with their daily target.
3. The daily progress report should be made available to all the staffs so that they have a clear idea about the amount of work they need to do per day in order to reach their set goal
4. Instead of a 12 hour shift a rotational shift of  hours can be introduced so that the workers get optimum rest.

The amendments in the contingency plans are as follows-

1. Each team will have an experienced leader to keep the employees motivated
2. The feasibility analysis should be done on weekly basis in order to calculate the lag in the work flow more accurately.

The schedule is prepared for a timeframe of 1 week which will be repeated every week expect the activity of employees’ training.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Continuous Improvements	9 days	Tue 15-05-18	Fri 25-05-18
Employees training on specifications of the machines and their target goal	2 days	Tue 15-05-18	Wed 16-05-18
Follow up on project progress	1 day	Thu 17-05-18	Thu 17-05-18	1
Leader keeping his team motivated	1 day	Thu 17-05-18	Thu 17-05-18	1
change in shift time of the employees	1 day	Fri 18-05-18	Fri 18-05-18	3
regular meetings to address the issues of the employees	1 day	Fri 18-05-18	Fri 18-05-18	3
regular follow up on the progress report	1 day	Mon 21-05-18	Mon 21-05-18	5
Employee motivational programs	2 days	Fri 18-05-18	Mon 21-05-18	3
Quality check and quality improvement program	4 days	Tue 22-05-18	Fri 25-05-18	6

The schedule Gantt chart is represented below-

 

Figure 1: Representing the Gantt chart of the shifting project

(Source: Generated by Author using MS project)

The work activities marked in red in the Gantt chart above depict the critical path of the project

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