Engineering and Product Development Management: The Holistic Approach [Hardcover]

Stephen Armstrong (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521790697 | ISBN-13: 978-0521790697 | Publication Date: September 24, 2001 | Edition: 1

This practical guide to the components of engineering management employs a holistic approach. It will help engineers and managers understand how to improve the product development process by deploying new technology and new methods of working in concurrent teams. The book integrates elements from six well-known and understood bodies of knowledge: integrated product development, project management, process management, systems engineering, product data management, and organizational change management. These elements are framed within an overall enterprise-wide architecture. The techniques discussed work for both huge multinational organizations and smaller enterprises. The emphasis throughout is on practical tools for engineers, managers, and consultants responsible for project and product development.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Stephen Armstrong's book makes a good contribution to the body of knowledge on product development, and deserves a place in the library of any manager working in this area." Mark Crowne, IEE Review

"Stephen Armstrong's book is an invaluable resource that advocates the integration of technical aspects of engineering with leadership and process management. It is an excellent addition to the libraries of planning, design, and operation engineers, consulting engineers, project and program managers, engineering managers, directors and executives." Daria Babaie, Engineering Dimensions

"...a practical guide to the components of engineering management..." Business Horizons

Book Description

This book is a practical guide to the components of engineering management, using a holistic approach. It will help engineers and managers understand what they have to do to improve the product development process by deploying new technology and new methods of working in concurrent teams. The book takes elements from six well known and understood bodies of knowledge and integrates them into a holistic approach: integrated product development, project management, process management, systems engineering, product data management, and organizational change management. These elements are framed within an overall enterprise-wide architecture. The techniques discussed in this book work for both huge multinational organizations and smaller enterprises.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (September 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521790697
• ISBN-13: 978-0521790697
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,919,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Holistic Approach is far reaching, February 13, 2003

By 

david Anderson (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering and Product Development Management: The Holistic Approach (Hardcover)

I read this book over the past few months and felt compelled to write a review. The book is very important to me. I have been managing and directing engineering and product development for years and I am a strong and experienced engineer. I have managed some fairly complex and challenging projects for electronic device companies. I realize now that some of these projects and products, while successful, required a lot of energy and effort to carry through. I also realize that I have tended to see these projects as largely "engineer-centered" projects without the needed holism. Further, I now realize that it takes a very special individual to really lead a project. In my case, it was the president of my company who intervened and really made the difference in the process. I understood subconsciously what he was doing. However, it was not until I read the book that I realized how really complex the process was and how the "engineering-centered" view was a potential weak spot in the process.

As part of the rejuvenation of our products, I launched the "new look" project as engineering manager. Early on, it was clear that the project had a lot of skepticism, factions, diverse opinions, and general resistance to change. As Stephen Armstrong suggests, change management is a very profound process to establish and maintain. He also implies that engineers may only focus on the linear and technical process and perhaps not grasp or control the other influences that can affect the success of true product development. In the case of Summit, the president joined the project team and participated actively in the meetings and the process because I think that he knew that this had to be a "holistic" process. This was critical because of the importance of the project to the company. Some team members at the meetings suggested that he was usurping my role as project leader. I was engineering manager and had assumed the role of "team leader" because traditionally product development was centered in engineering/R&D. What I experienced was a lot of resistance and resentment from other departments such as manufacturing, QA, and service. I realized that if the project were to succeed that I would need a strong mandate from the top and sustainable support from the corner office, along with much better teamwork. I did not resent the president's presence. Instead, I sensed that something good and interesting was happening. In retrospect, I now see that he (the president) wanted an integrated (holistic) solution and that there were forces and influences that only he could influence or control. The lesson to me was that thinking of the project only in a linear technical fashion, while important, was not the complete answer to getting things done in the needed time frame. The final project was not perfect in all respects. While we were able to keep development cost down, this did take more time because of the need to locate and coordinate contract resources and unexpected problems with certain key vendors. Also, we spent resources on a feature that was later decided to eliminate. Regardless, we did demonstrate to the marketplace that we had up-to-date technology and the commitment to support our products going forward.

A couple of other items
* Our president (COO) sent the whole company off to project management training. This was an important step because it provided a common agenda and dialog for the team and it showed the commitment of top management to success of the project and the product.

* The COO's time and availability became a problem because of business pressures. He did not abandon the project and appointed a second-in-command, a marketing director, to continue the day-to-day operations. The marketing director had sufficient communications skills, organizational clout, and the ability to stimulate teamwork that kept the process going. In fact, it was one of the best functioning teams because a workable process replaced the interdepartmental conflicts.

The COO was and is a smart, demanding, and a really good leader. What he did was to address the product development process in the holistic manner that Stephen describes. At times, I felt that my role as engineering manager was being affected by the President's intervention. The president was careful to get my agreement and he made a point of sitting beside me at meetings to lend support. I realize now that I could not have pulled off the project by myself. The engineering process alone had been tried twice before and had failed to produce results. It was an uphill struggle with a lot of technical challenges along with the project challengers. The political, organizational, etc. issues were too large and beyond the scope of my control. I am a good manager in the engineering process but not in the league of the president. So the purpose of the article is to point out the revelation that I had during the project and especially when I read the book.

Those who do not apply a holistic approach to product development are most likely old school executives/engineers (we've done it this way for 30 years) who are the blockers in the organization. The author describes in detail the tactics to deal with blockers. The blockers usually ignore the human issues and think a team is just a collection of people in a room.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book on PD Processes & Political Management, February 10, 2003

By 

J Curry (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering and Product Development Management: The Holistic Approach (Hardcover)

The vision of engineering management presented by Stephen Armstrong is one that is both broad in its context and deep in its coverage. He offers the engineering project manager with a extensive set of management tools that, when used in total, will assure project success while improving overall project engineering effectiveness. Managers that employ this methodology will soon find this to be their indispensable desktop reference manual as the progress through the phases of product development.

The demands on the modern engineering manager are greater than they have ever been and the challenges to program success continue to grow exponentially. The rapid growth of technology has resulted in most of the products being developed by current and future companies - large and small - being inordinately complex systems of integrated technologies. This complexity is exacerbated by the complicated interdependencies among the technologies of the various product components. The availability of highly capable e-design, e-analysis, and e-prototyping tools and the growth in new methods that better integrate design and manufacturing are both wonderful benefits and potential burdens to the engineering teams using them. The move to virtual prototyping changes the planning and staffing profiles from that of the traditional project engineering organization. Added to these changes are the increasing demands for shorter and shorter engineering span times accompanied with further expectation that engineering costs must be reduced by factors of 30% to 50% for businesses to remain competitive, and in some cases these reductions are expected to be recurring. These factors bring additional uncertainties and risk to an activity that has traditionally been risky.

Given this backdrop, Stephen Armstrong urges us to view the engineering management problem from a different perspective than has been offered before. Engineering managers should adopt a total perspective of the problems that they have facing them.
While they divide the work along the logical lines of work breakdown, they must at the same time undertake the effort with the right tools and processes to assure success. At the core of these processes are the ones that provide a logical and systematic definition of work flow and that provide the mechanisms to control and manage risk. Since an engineering effort is simply the maturation of information, understanding the flow of information and the management of it is critical to success. We are also cautioned that the answers to good engineering management are more than just technical or administrative. The engineering manager must recognize that his primary resource is people and provide a human side to the management of engineering teams.

The managers that read this book will find the formula for the success of their projects. You will find as you read the pages of useful management methods that a pattern starts to unfold and the powerful concept of an integrated technical management will form. Your approach to successful engineering management will never be the same.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engineering and Product Development Management, February 9, 2003

By 

Gus Gillispie (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering and Product Development Management: The Holistic Approach (Hardcover)

CAMC Book Review

Engineering and Product Development Management: The Holistic Approach, Stephen C. Armstrong, PEng, CEng, FIMechE, CMC; Cambridge University Press:2001. (248 pages, plus 77 pages of appendices; US$55.00, available through "Books for Business" and elsewhere.) Reviewed by Gus Gillespie, P Eng, FCMC.

One of the greatest challenges facing companies that develop, manufacture and sell complex products is bring their new offerings to market on time, on budget and as specified. In spite of its importance, and the great volume of material available on different aspects of the problem, there has been little practical guidance for managing the overall process. With this book, Stephen Armstrong has made a major contribution to closing this gap.
In this tightly crafted work, Mr. Armstrong presents his condensation of twenty years experience as an engineer, an engineering manager and a management consultant focused on bringing highly complex products to market as fast and effectively as possible. Much of his experience has been gained working with aircraft companies around the world. The products of these companies are among the most technically sophisticated and complex machines devised by man, and they are sold in a highly competitive global market. The costs of developing such products is staggering, and companies are literally "betting the farm" with every new product development project. There is no tolerance for errors, omissions or delays - development projects must succeed.
The solution offered by Mr. Armstrong is "a holistic approach": one that looks at all dimensions of the product development challenge and draws on a broad set of management disciplines to ensure the challenge is met. In the first section of his book, Mr. Armstrong sets the stage by concisely describing the holistic approach and the six bodies of knowledge needed to support it: Integrated Product Development, Project/Program Management, Process Management, Organizational Change/Political Management, Product Data Management and Systems Engineering.
In the main body of the work, Mr. Armstrong explains how to apply these diverse bodies of management knowledge to the problem of product development. This section is rich with examples of techniques, tools and practical applications drawn from real product development projects. Although the context is usually that of a large project in a large company, the descriptions are readily applicable to smaller organizations with equally critical need for successful product development projects.
In his final section, Mr. Armstrong offers a blueprint for establishing the holistic approach to product development in any company, large or small. In it, he offers one of the most cogent and compelling discussions on overcoming resistance to change that I have encountered anywhere. This is, in itself, well worth the price of the book.