Implementing a Shop Management Platform with a Product Management Organization

Most AEC firms face challenges in the way they are structured to develop, implement, and manage business technology. Technology infrastructure and support resources can sometimes be too disconnected from the business to adequately understand their needs or to measure the successful implementation of technology in terms of business value. New solutions and approaches are needed to address these gaps.

PdMO and the PLC

At McKinstry, we have established a Product Management Organization (PdMO)?to create a technical connection across the enterprise that works at depth and breadth in the focused area of business systems and technologies. Our efforts include not only research, development, and implementation, but also measuring the successful implementation of business technology.

McKinstry’s PdMO is structured with a leadership team that focuses on multiple lines of business.?McKinstry’s Construction line of business (LOB) spans most phases of the entire AEC industry, including sales, design and engineering, preconstruction, detailing, fabrication, construction, and turnover. Every construction technology (ConTech) initiative is defined and validated by its ability mitigate business pains and challenges, and to provide business value.

Like all PdMO projects, our ConTech initiatives are executed to conform to a standard seven-phase product lifecycle (PLC), with these phases: SELL, DEVELOP, ENGINEER & MANUFACTURE, BUILD, TRANSITION, OPERATE, AND DISCONTINUE. These generally align with other PLCs at McKinstry, whether they are for an entire line of business, or specific process or workflow within that business. Within each of these major PLC phases are various tasks and activities arranged to ensure the successful execution of a product, as well as clearly defined stage gates to proceed from one to the next.

Each PdMO initiative exists to solve a known business challenge, and its success is measured by its ability to provide quantifiable or qualifiable business value. In the SELL phase of the PLC, during initial discovery, PdMO conducts interviews with business process owners and key stakeholders to identify business pain and challenges, their root causes, and the downstream impact this pain has on others. We strive to quantify the business value of that pain in real dollars (or time, or some other metric), and to qualify the pain where if it eludes clear quantification. As the cost of investment of a solution to the problem becomes known in later phases, we can develop a simple ROI calculation to ensure we are right sizing the solution to the problem at hand.

As a project becomes organized with a project charter, it is critical that we define a clear vision and goals for the initiative, along with “SMART” (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timebound) objectives and business outcomes. We also develop success metrics that align to these outcomes, and define them in a way that we can, indeed, measure a business improvement or progress towards that outcome.?It is critical that we do this before jumping ahead to identify and develop an applicable solution – which is not always easy when our customers in the Construction LOB are anxious to move forward with a preconceived notion of the solution.

Shop Management Platform

To exemplify the way our ConTech projects come together, here is a description of McKinstry’s current effort to put a Shop Management Platform in place. For the Shop Management Platform initiative, McKinstry is currently implementing a new product, MSUITE, as our preferred solution.

In 2019, McKinstry identified the need to manage the day-to-day flow of orders, measure productivity, and connect all our Pacific Northwest shops and the end-to-end supply chain, from order to installation. After some well thought-out research by our manufacturing and supply chain teams, they approached PdMO with the need for a Shop Management Platform in early 2020, and it soon became a key ConTech project for PdMO to execute.

In our discovery, an early step in the first SELL phase of our PLC, we learned that we did not operate our many shops from a comprehensive platform, and thus did not have clear visibility to metrics required to make informed business decisions. We identified and quantified multiple business pains and impacts, including:

• Poor communication of key dates and scopes, no visibility for extended stakeholders due to multiple points of data entry
• Unreliable look-aheads and lack of information at-a-glance impeding accurate planning
• Manual, labor-intensive, paper-based processes at risk of human error and duplication
• Poor communication and coordination across and between our geographically dispersed shops
• Time-consuming synchronous conversations to track status of fabrication packages Specific tasks unknown and untracked, despite good guesses of overall scope based on historical performance
• Uncertainty and inaccuracies from subjective estimating, due to an inability to track shop productivity or rely on factual data

We were able to quantify each of these business pains in real dollars, and in some cases qualify them with compelling evidence or anecdotes. From here, we created a set of SMART objectives related to productivity tracking, process consolidation, data-driven decision-planning, streamlining production flows, and increasing visibility into supply chain status and work packages.

These objectives were then mapped to a set of success metrics, to which we could apply specific quantifiable data. For example, we are measuring the total cost of shop production within and between network of connected shops, with a granularity to understand cost by line, assembly, product, shop, and margin in terms of man-hours or time per product/project, which maps to our objectives to track productivity and use data-driven decision-planning.

Once these quantifiable pains, SMART objectives, and success metrics were identified and agreed to in a consensus with the business process owners and project stakeholders, we then proceeded to define the scope of our project.?For the Shop Management Platform, we arrived at a scope encompassing: 1. Planning (BIM Work Plans, Shop Labor Plans, Shop Logistics Plans); 2. Doing (Procurement, Material Management, and Shop Work); and 3. Tracking (Productivity Tracking and Supply Chain Status Tracking). It is worth noting that – equally important to defining the scope of work – it is vital to get consensus with project stakeholders what might be stretch goals to consider, and what aspects of the original wishlist and desired capabilities are out of scope.

With a project scope agreed to, we then proceeded to DEVELOP (second phase of our PLC) the project. We performed market research and identified five potential solutions/providers with whom we were interested in pursuing a potential solution. We also developed technical requirements and acceptance criteria for a solution, and translated that into a Request for Proposals from the five vendors.?We reviewed the proposals and participated in several demonstrations of their solutions and narrowed the field to a short list of MSUITE, Stratus, and Manufacton. Each candidate solution for our shop management platform had their merits and drawbacks. After careful review and consideration, including in-depth interviews and more software proofs-of-concept and demonstrations, one clear winner rose to the surface: MSUITE.

With our preferred vendor selected, we proceeded to ENGINEER & MANUFACTURE (third phase of our PLC) a solution with them as we negotiated, right-sized, and procured a solution that would work for our needs. MSUITE was a willing partner in our desire to start small and increase our footprint of their solution as we deployed it across our network of shops. We developed an implementation in plan in parallel with this discussion, to ensure we could quickly build on small successes to get buy-in from the users impacted by the change.

By mid-2020, we proceeded to our BUILD phase (fourth phase of our PLC). Since this solution is primarily procured from an outside party, with minimal need for custom software development, this phase consists of executing on our implementation plan, with the appropriate support and services from MSUITE, like consultation and training.

Now in 2021, we are well along our way to implementing MSUITE across our network of shops, with just a few more trades to go in a few more locations. PdMO has engaged our Operational Excellence team to develop Standard-Operating Procedures (SOPs), and we have begun the TRANSITION to stable operations of the product across our shops this year.

We are already taking an early look at the success metrics we identified a year ago, and noting which ones look to be on track, and which ones may need some refinement in definition or more time to realize. Our intention is to be fully deployed, measure, and make necessary adjustments as part of our final OPERATE phase of the PLC by the end of this year. We can then decide on any improvements or future integrations as we continue to improve our shop, our supply chain, and our Construction LOB at large.

Conclusion

Having a PdMO organization in place to manage business technology roadmaps and align technology to business needs and value is just one approach an AEC firm can take. It works well for McKinstry, as a well-established firm with a rich set of services and offerings that touch on all phases of a facility lifecycle (design, build, operate, maintain, etc.). It gives us a framework for innovation with enough structure and process to be effective in executing projects and developing products in a “live-fire” situation, enabling us to manage change with minimal disruption to our business.

This has proven to be the case so far with our implementation of MSUITE as a Shop Management Platform.?Our careful approach to identify real business pains, and select and implement a solution well-aligned to those pains, is key to the success of the project. It helps, too, that MSUITE has demonstrated themselves to be an agile and willing partner, listening carefully to our needs, and helping address challenges and potential obstacles along the way. It is worth noting that MSUITE does not just apply to complex shop operations like McKinstry’s; no matter how small or large your manufacturing and supply chain may be, it is a solution that is capable of scaling to your needs as a Shop Management Platform.

Whether you’re implementing a Shop Management Platform, or any other ConTech solution – and whether you have a formal PdMO serving multiple lines of business, informal “PdMO-like” approach for a single department or business unit, or find yourself just needing to execute on a single construction technology – I highly recommend you define a clear change management process, identify the business problem, quantify business value, and align outcomes and success metrics to ensure you meet the needs of the business.