PD-Trak™ includes the following tools.
| Action Item Register |
The Action Item Register is
used to track open and closed actions identified during the course
of development. Besides general use by the team, the Action Item
Register is invaluable in tracking action items resulting from
stage-gate reviews and design reviews. |
| Bill of Material Worksheet |
The Bill of Material Worksheet provides a flexible tool to
develop a preliminary engineering bill of material. It provides
single and multiple level views and maintains a variety of related
information. Items are coded as make, buy or standard and buy items
can be automatically moved to the Supplier Plan to aid and track
sourcing decisions. The Bill of Material Worksheet also includes
integrated cost roll-up capabilities and comparison to target
costs. |
| Budget and Schedule Worksheet |
The Budget and Schedule Worksheet
is used to define the preliminary schedule for each phase/stage
and estimate the development cost based
on phase length and staffing profile. Because of its ease of use, it
can be used early in the project
prior to a more formal project plan and costed resource estimate. |
| Control Plan |
Control Plans aid in the manufacture of
quality products to meet customer requirements. The Control
Plan provide a written description of the process and quality
controls to assure an acceptable product and to minimize product and
process variation. |
| Design for Assembly Assessment |
Design for Assembly (DFA) refers to the principles of designing
products so that they are more manufacturable. The DFA
Assessment Worksheet provides a simple to use assessment
methodology to evaluate concepts and designs early in the development
process before sufficient information may be available to use more
formal DFM/A analysis software or companies that don't want to make
a more significant investment in DFA software. |
| Design for Manufacturability/Assembly (DFM/A)
Checklist/Guidelines |
Design for Manufacturability/Assembly Checklist/Guidelines are
included to aid designers develop producible designs. These
checklists/guidelines can be adapted to the company's specific
product and process requirements. The checklists/guidelines
cover assembly, printed circuits, machining, sheetmetal, and
injection molding. |
| Design Review Agendas |
The Design Review Agendas list the elements
to address in each design review including the deliverables that
should have been produced and will be reviewed. |
| Failure Modes and Effects & Analysis |
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is
a methodology for analyzing potential product and process
reliability problems early in the development cycle where it is
easier to take actions to overcome these issues, thereby enhancing
reliability through design. The FMEA Worksheet is used to identify
potential failure modes, determine their effect on the operation of
the product or process, and identify actions to mitigate the
failures. |
| Financial Justification Worksheet |
The Financial Justification Worksheet provides
a standard method for assessing the financial return of the project.
It takes the estimate from the Development Expense Worksheet, the target cost
from the Target Cost Calculation Worksheet, and develops sales
estimates based on forecasts and target price to determine the
estimated project profit and assess whether there is a sufficient
business case for developing the new product. |
| Manufacturing Plan |
The Manufacturing Plan provides a template
to aid in the development of a comprehensive plan that is
incrementally built and added to during each stage of the development
project. This plan will address where and how the product will be
manufactured, what investment is required to produce the product,
and the supply chain to support production. |
| Marketing Plan |
The Marketing Plan provides a template to
aid in the development of a comprehensive plan that is incrementally
built and added to during each stage of the development project.
This plan will address how the product will be launched, promoted
and sold. |
| Master Project Schedule |
The Master Project Schedule extracts
information from the Project Files to compile a concise management
summary of key information for each project. There are three views
that can be selected: Calendar, Stage-Gate Dates and Details. |
| Other Project Documents |
Templates are provided to aid
in the creation of Meeting Minutes, Project
Status Report, and Trip Report. Meeting Minutes and Project
Status reports can be hyperlinked
to a listing by date to maintain
a easily accessible historical record. |
| Performance Measurement |
PD-Trak™ provides a wide range of project
and product metrics and charts to monitor and report performance
over the life of the project. The system also
includes additional data to develop further metrics. |
| Portfolio Management |
A variety of tools are provided to support portfolio management.
The Master Project Schedule provides a
summary of all active as well as proposed projects, classifies them
by status (active, proposed, on-hold) and by business unit/product
line, and provides additional information to help manage the
portfolio including type of development project, development cost,
projected sales, and financial return. This will allow management to
develop a balanced approach to selecting and continuing with the
appropriate mix of projects to satisfy product mix, financial
return, investment and risk requirements. Projects can be sorted by
score and development productivity index as a basis for
prioritization. A risk-reward bubble chart and pie chart by
development type can be prepared to assure balance. Templates are
provided for product and technology roadmaps to identify linkages
within product families and product platform relationships and
assure that these relationships are considered for portfolio
management purposes. |
| Project Brief |
The Project Brief is a one page summary of
the product and the development project used to propose and
authorize the project, communicate the project's intent to team
members and management, define its boundary conditions, and
summarize the project and any changes at subsequent stage-gate
reviews. |
| Project Schedule |
The Project Schedule is created in
Microsoft Project from the tasks and owners identified in the Task Plans. PD-Trak™ is
integrated with the MS Project Plan to generate a Gantt
chart in MS Project. Updates to the Project Schedule in MS Project can
be automatically passed back to the Task Plans for product
team review. |
| Project Team List & Calendar |
The Project Team List provides a directory of the team members, their
roles and contact information. The Calendar captures key upcoming
events in addition to team member’s travel and vacation plans. |
| Project Tracking Charts |
Project Tracking Charts compare
the original plan to the actual project performance for development
time and cost. |
| Quality Function Deployment (QFD) |
Quality function deployment is a structured planning and
decision-making methodology for capturing
customer needs (voice of the customer) and translating those needs
into product requirements or technical characteristics, part characteristics,
process plans and quality plans. PD-Trak provides a
series of planning matrices to document the information and plans developed
during this process. These include a Product Planning Matrix
(house of quality), Concept Selection Matrix, Deployment Matrix,
and Process Planning Matrix. Note that the Control Plan serves as
the planning matrix for process and quality control. |
| Risk Management Plan |
The Risk Management Plan is a key element
of an effective project management approach. It provides a
structured, easy-to-use assessment of project risks and provides a
format to identify what actions to take to mitigate the most
significant risks and assign responsibility for those actions. |
| Supplier Plan |
The Supplier Plan tracks newly developed buy items so that
sourcing decisions can be tracked and made. It contains additional
information to help manage supplier information about each new item
for procurement. |
| Stage-Gate Review Agendas |
The Stage-Gate Review Agendas
list the questions to address in each review including the
appropriate performance measures and deliverables to consider. |
| Stage-Gate Archives |
At each stage-gate or key milestone in the
process, snap shots of the standard project documents are archived
and linked to the Stage-Gate Archives page. |
| Target Costing |
Target costing establishes a market-driven
target price to be successful and derives a target cost to drive
product development. The target costing tools include a Target Cost
Calculation Worksheet, a Target Cost Evaluation Worksheet, and a
Target Cost Tracking Worksheet and Charts |
| Task Plans |
Tasks and deliverables are identified for
each stage in the development process in the Task Plan worksheets.
The responsibility for completing each task and deliverable is
assigned to an individual team member or functional department and
the status of these tasks and deliverables is tracked for each
project by stage. These serve as either an adjunct or alternative to
a project management system. |
| Verification Plan |
The Verification Plan template aids in the
development of a comprehensive plan for verifying through testing
and analysis that the product will meet
specifications.
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