BASES DE PRESENTACION DE LOS ESTADOS CONTABLES CONSOLIDADOS

Critical path tasks on a global project can be very challenging for a project manager. Tasks that lie on the critical path of a proj- ect cannot be delayed without sacrificing the project’s schedule performance and any delays in them most likely would ruin your project’s cost performance. A global project manager has to dou- bly focus on critical path tasks. Several noncritical tasks can slip during execution of a project and can become critical.

In a rotary engine design and development project that I was heavily involved in, seals used between combustion chambers became a major issue. After our initial design and prototype build, structural integrity of the seals degraded fast. We had to perform a thorough failure analysis, redesign the seals, and retest them. At the beginning of the project, the seal design tasks had a handsome slack time for an iterative development process so that it was not on the project’s critical path. After the third design iteration, seal design tasks moved up to the critical path. The project manager had to beef up the seal design team with several expert consultants and had daily meetings on it in order to achieve the final design. We finally achieved the life expectancy out of the seals after the fifth design iteration. It delayed the project by a month and had a 30% cost overrun for the seal design portion of the project. Sometimes at the beginning, a technologically leading-edge com- ponent’s design looks simple and straightforward, but by the end it comes back to bite your project. When I look back on the seal design task history, other project approaches come to mind. If we had had the two expert consultants at the beginning of the task, we might have achieved our goal with a couple of design iterations within the allocated time and even within the allocated budget.

In another critical path task case, my project’s chip soft- ware design team always got tangled with the customer’s continual design modifications. The customer’s change approval process was very bureaucratic and therefore it sometimes took a month to see the final approved change. Luckily, the project was managed on a time and material basis. So these delays did not hurt my company financially, but they affected the duration of several critical path tasks and the completion date of the project. Also, my team mem- bers’ efficiency dropped substantially while waiting for approved design modifications. I discussed this issue several times with my customer’s project manager. He insisted on waiting for the final approved design modifications before doing anything. I could not

move my team members to other projects during these lull times. Our project’s productivity dropped, but we still charged our time to the customer. A yearlong project lasted almost a year and a half.

In an electric bus design project, the batteries we purchased for the buses were leading state of the art critical items, but they were not on the critical path of the project. I had to call my battery supplier daily along with my purchasing agent in order to ensure that there were no issues in the manufacturing and delivery of my batteries.

More often than not, a critical path task can be assigned to a subteam in a faraway location in the United States or in another country. Managing such a critical path task can be very challeng- ing. In such a case, I had to plant one of my engineers with a subteam in France for six months for the construction of several advanced hydraulic components for my project. On top of that, we had to teleconference twice a week to assure them that the critical task was moving along smoothly. We were able to tackle all the issues in a timely fashion and the critical task was completed suc- cessfully on time.

In another critical task case, during setting up and qualifi- cation of a new wafer factory, my senior sputtering equipment engineer jumped ship and moved to our competitor. I had to scramble to find a replacement, which was not easy at all. At the time, sputtering equipment engineers were on demand. Through our human resources department and my contacts, we did a very detailed search without finding any feasible replacement. I decided to groom one of my novice engineers for this critical task. I also decided to get help from the equipment supplier. We agreed that one of their seasoned engineers would come to our factory and qualify the new sputtering equipment and at the same time train my new engineer. This was an expensive option, but I had to go along with it in order to complete my project without any delay.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT EVENT

• During the execution of a global project, several non- critical tasks can easily slip back and become critical. • Critical tasks have to be completed satisfactorily on time

even if you experience cost overruns to finalize them. • If you have a critical task that is being performed in a

foreign country, you better have a constant and reliable observer at that location.