How to adopt new lean techniques thanks to ELP – Part 2

Frederic Dufour / Jan 05 , 2020

To follow up on How to adopt new lean techniques thanks to ELP – part 1 the next task that assists you in optimizing your performance through ELP contests the time-to-market battle. Winning this battle is a question of agility. In many cases, a plan is made based on rough estimates that oversimplify the project and rarely changes.

These methods are insufficient, as agile planning processes can provide greater value. To do this, it is necessary to test the impact of different types of events on delivery dates beforehand. This step should test scenarios such as: loss of critical resources, changing certain project deadlines and priorities, adding unplanned activities, adding longer and more difficult tasks. Finally, the scenario of possible delays in essential supplies should be tested.

By analyzing these possibilities, you can be prepared for the worse and therefore cannot be caught out. ELP techniques improve the Time-to-Market by encouraging better monitoring of project schedules and risks, thus providing more time to solve or adapt to any inconveniences.

Agility also means regularly taking into account the evolution of the current project portfolio and any changes in the composition of the resource portfolio or project priorities. You do this through efficient PDCA cycles that allow you to reconsider decisions in light of all observed events and changes that could affect the initially agreed plan.

The next task is to analyze the performance of your Corporate Planning Office (CPO). The following stages are to be saved by the company as they help to better understand the organization and the environment: initial construction of the plan, scenarios assessed, simulations tested, successive progress statuses and events that forced you to change. Throughout this task, you should start to elaborate and implement strategies that not only reduce costs, but also increase turnover and profits.

In order to increase the performance of your Corporate Planning Office, find buffer activities, use buffer resources, anticipate, and counter declines in activity as well as disruptions. In order to increase profits, specialize your activities, your resources and adapt third party agreements, and dynamic pricing..

Lastly, ELP techniques based on the use of an intelligent scheduling engine decrease manual workload. Intelligent scheduling engine benefits companies as optimized plans are built within seconds, whether it is for a single project or a portfolio of hundreds of projects. This increases scalability as companies can manage dozens or thousands of tasks and resources with the same ease. Planning is accelerated as optimized schedules can be created in mere seconds. Such an intelligent scheduling engine is also reactive to change therefore it takes progress and changes into account and re-schedules on the spot. Finally, realistic reporting is carried out as the engine generates and reads intelligent reports, turning them into clear summaries.