Earned value management applied to an engineered-to-order multiple project environment

Fox, DL

Earned value management applied to an engineered-to-order multiple project environment

Fox, DL

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2012

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Fox, DL
dc.date.accessioned	2013-09-04T06:16:36Z
dc.date.available	2013-09-04T06:16:36Z
dc.date.issued	2012
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/23489
dc.description	University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	The supply of Engineered-to-Order pressure equipment in Australia has established a place in the global market. Local manufacturing requires innovation to maintain its position in this supply chain. Changes at the manufacturing level looked to project management to connect the end product’s development and delivery with the end user’s needs. Earned Value Management (EVM) offers project management a best practice in project control and its application to this niche market was considered worthy of investigation as a response to market changes. EVM has a long history of application in large and complicated projects. This provided researchers with material to study application detail across the cost and time domains, resulting in well-established theories about performance outputs and forecasting. EVM implementation has also been the subject of research offering guidance to the user. An area of EVM that remains in the background is the application, implementation and benefits of the method in the smaller manufacturing sector. This research applies EVM to a project orientated organisation that designs and manufactures customised pressure equipment. The objective of this practice-based research is to address questions of EVM application, implementation and benefits when applied to a multiple project environment set within an operations context. A series of twelve projects carried out by the host organisation were subject to EVM application. This provided data to assess the response of EVM to the short duration project and to explore various forecasting behaviours from both the cost and time domains under different reporting frequencies. The process of application was also used to establish qualitative information on implementation and organisational effects as a result of the methods presence. Results indicated EVM is adaptable to the sampled manufacturing projects and tracking capabilities were positive on the few larger projects in the sample. Net benefit to the internal project management function is not represented by EVM tracking, when restricted to the short duration project. Forecasting of both cost and time was adversely affected by high material costs, but displayed stability after this project phase. Exclusion of materials simplified application by reducing administration effort however it did exaggerate deviation of progress from the plan. High project and organisational value is realised by access to EVM’s data sources and structure. It was therefore concluded EVM methodology, coupled to organisational project management and business system theories can deliver substantial operational gains for the project orientated manufacturer.	en_US
dc.format	Thesis (ME)	en_US
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/23489/5/02whole.pdf
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.subject	Project management.	en
dc.subject	Manufacturing.	en
dc.subject	Earned value management.	en
dc.subject	EVM.	en
dc.subject	Pressure vessel.	en
dc.title	Earned value management applied to an engineered-to-order multiple project environment	en_US
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access

Abstract:

The supply of Engineered-to-Order pressure equipment in Australia has established a place in the global market. Local manufacturing requires innovation to maintain its position in this supply chain. Changes at the manufacturing level looked to project management to connect the end product’s development and delivery with the end user’s needs. Earned Value Management (EVM) offers project management a best practice in project control and its application to this niche market was considered worthy of investigation as a response to market changes. EVM has a long history of application in large and complicated projects. This provided researchers with material to study application detail across the cost and time domains, resulting in well-established theories about performance outputs and forecasting. EVM implementation has also been the subject of research offering guidance to the user. An area of EVM that remains in the background is the application, implementation and benefits of the method in the smaller manufacturing sector. This research applies EVM to a project orientated organisation that designs and manufactures customised pressure equipment. The objective of this practice-based research is to address questions of EVM application, implementation and benefits when applied to a multiple project environment set within an operations context. A series of twelve projects carried out by the host organisation were subject to EVM application. This provided data to assess the response of EVM to the short duration project and to explore various forecasting behaviours from both the cost and time domains under different reporting frequencies. The process of application was also used to establish qualitative information on implementation and organisational effects as a result of the methods presence. Results indicated EVM is adaptable to the sampled manufacturing projects and tracking capabilities were positive on the few larger projects in the sample. Net benefit to the internal project management function is not represented by EVM tracking, when restricted to the short duration project. Forecasting of both cost and time was adversely affected by high material costs, but displayed stability after this project phase. Exclusion of materials simplified application by reducing administration effort however it did exaggerate deviation of progress from the plan. High project and organisational value is realised by access to EVM’s data sources and structure. It was therefore concluded EVM methodology, coupled to organisational project management and business system theories can deliver substantial operational gains for the project orientated manufacturer.

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