All projects must reduce waste in terms of time and resources, and lean efforts can help to do this while also improving the value provided to customers. However, Bohan & Jacques (2023) contend in their article for Industry Week that companies, especially those of automobiles, may offer exaggerated value to customers (“gold-plating”) as a strategy to hide poorly managed operations and increased project waste. The practice of “gold-plating” involves including tasks or features that the client did not ask for and that do not enhance their experience. Gold plating, a sort of overproduction, is one of the worst wastes that manufacturers produce for themselves. Another example of gold-plating is working longer hours to reduce the negative effects of inferior process control, increasing project waste in terms of costs and time. In both instances, the automaker goes above and beyond what is necessary to provide the required value. Delays, a lack of adaptability, improper activity prioritization, and more.
Analysis
Having well-controlled and scheduled tasks may reduce gold-plating in industrial processes and the associated resource and time loss. This is because, in manufacturing, process unpredictability results in a more unexpected downtime of machinery and scrap, which are direct costs. Indirect costs from compensating for delays, inefficiencies, and poor quality are also included (Atin & Lubis, 2019). Because of this, the project’s time and finances are wasted on urgent making-up operations rather than crucial but not urgent assignments that would advance the company. The traditional approach of the milestone mindset that encourages postponement is the primary cause of these many types of waste and improperly controlled processes. This thinking encourages people to put off tasks until the last minute. Tasks should therefore be interrelated. These activities establish a string of interrelated tasks that should occur in a particular sequence to accomplish the project’s goal. As a result, critical path management (CPM) is a preferable strategy for automakers who wish to eliminate gold plating and the waste it causes by removing unneeded deviations and delays from all of their systems (Atin & Lubis, 2019). CPM is advantageous for car manufacturers as it will ensure that they can provide their consumers with what they are looking for when they need it without incurring extra costs or delays.
CPM is a prevalent and trustworthy instrument for improving the precision of project timelines. The project manager can better plan work by dividing them into important and non-critical ones (Ba’Its et al., 2020). In the case of automakers, CPM assists in identifying high-priority functions and activities and outlining them in the action plan, minimizing the need to add supplemental features or jobs (gold plating), and maintaining the timely and cost-effective operation of production. Additionally, CPM offers more adaptability. A CPM diagram gives project managers the tools to quickly revise the timeline when things fail to go as expected (Ba’Its et al., 2020). For the auto industry, overproduction is frequently done to maintain high customer service despite operational issues. However, this leads to more production expenses and overtime, which may be reduced by employing CPM. The project manager may compare results and select the best alternative regarding scheduling and expenses by using CPM to estimate the consequences of various product quality and volume changes.
Thirdly, overspending or overrunning risks are identified using CPM. Project managers can more accurately predict the ripple effects of a delay thanks to CPM plans that establish the link between dependent activities (Atin & Lubis, 2019). For instance, operations like gold-plating in the automotive industry lead to overproduction, which calls for more overtime to counteract the effects of inadequate process control. These delays caused by the gold-plating operations expose the business to rivals that provide different value ratios, such as providing customers what they want instead of more. Making educated judgments about task prioritizing would assist automakers in determining which tasks are more expensive and risky.
CPM is also useful for accurately estimating project length. Time management is essential for completing projects on time and preventing them from running over. A project’s ability to stay on schedule and within budget depends on how well it is planned, reducing the possibility of going over budget and using too much time and resources (Ba’Its et al., 2020). In conclusion, CPM assists automakers in streamlining the time management of their manufacturing procedures by determining their length. For instance, automotive manufacturers may quickly comprehend the production schedule and status by utilizing CPM diagrams. This will help them prevent overproduction and strengthen process control, reducing waste in terms of production costs and schedules.
References
Atin, S., & Lubis, R. (2019, November). Implementation of critical path method in project planning and scheduling. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 662, No. 2, p. 022031). IOP Publishing.
Ba’Its, H. A., Puspita, I. A., & Bay, A. F. (2020). Combination of program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and critical path method (CPM) for project schedule development. International Journal of Integrated Engineering, 12(3), 68-75.
Bohan, R & Jacques, R. (2023). Car Manufacturers Provide Too Much Customer Value? https://www.industryweek.com/operations/continuous-improvement/article/21268301/can-manufacturers-provide-too-much-customer-value
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