1. Combating Uncertainty in the Workflow of Systems Engineering Projects
Barry Papke No Magic Inc. Allen, TX 75013, USA
Rick Dove Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

2. Background
For the past twenty years the construction industry has been examining its processes in the context of the changes and improvements seen in manufacturing production.
International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC)
Lean Construction Institute (LCI)
Glen Ballard, Gregory Howell, Lauri Koskela
They developed a production planning and management method, known as the Last Planner, to address problems of high work flow variability and low productivity in the building construction lifecycle.
This presentation examines the key principles of the Last Planner and looks for lessons that can be applied to Systems Engineering to reduce project variability.
Starting in the early nineties researchers in the construction industry have been examining its processes in the context of the changes and improvements seen in manufacturing production. While manufacturing has seen substantial improvements in production efficiency and elimination of waste through the adoption of so-called Lean techniques, production processes in the construction industry had not taken advantage of these techniques. Significant research has since been done in the construction industry to analyze and define a theory of construction production, and to understand the mechanisms that affect productivity and predictability for project completion. A production planning and management method, known as the Last Planner (Ballard 2000), was developed as a mechanism to address problems of high work flow variability in the building construction lifecycle, and low productivity by construction crews that don’t have all of the necessary pre-conditions completed in order for them to begin a scheduled task.

3. Typical Construction Site
While the image is on the screen, I will cover the points below, illustrating the commonality between the problems the guys in the photo face each day and the problems systems engineers, task leads, IPT leads and managers face.
Large systems engineering projects have many parallels with fixed site construction :
Master schedules and budgets are defined upfront
The project consists of requirements, design, manufacturing and production phases
Project’s goal is to engineer and deliver a product within schedule and budget
Made up of program managers, team leaders and workers
Obstacles to meeting cost and schedule surface daily:
Prerequisite work not complete
Lack of resources (manpower and/or equipment)
Late availability of components/materials
Changes in priority
Failure to accurately estimate the time required
Design changes
The Last Planner is really about reducing and countering variability on a project.
How does this apply to Systems Engineering?

4. What is the Last Planner?
“The Last Planner is an active production control system that actively causes events to conform to plan rather than responding to after-the-fact detection of variance to plan.”
Ballard’s choice of “Last Planner” as the title for his methodology reflects the hierarchy of planners in a complex system:
This is really the last intro slide. It wraps up the intro and ties it all to this concept of “the last planner”, the person this system is trying to help.
The person or group that creates immediate assignments is called the “Last Planner.”

5. Should-Can-Will
Hierarchical levels of planning for construction production:
Initial Planning (Master Planning)
Should be done
Lookahead Planning (Look Ahead Window)
Can be done
Commitment Planning (Daily-Weekly Work Plan)
Will be done
Ballard and Howell define three hierarchical levels of planning for construction production:
Initial Planning (Master Planning)
Produces the master schedule and triggers the initial push system for material flow. The master plan defines what “should be done.”
Lookahead Planning (Look Ahead Window)
Takes into account that current status of the production system and proactively adjusts budgets and schedules, pulling resources into play in order to avoid or mitigate deviations from the master plan. The lookahead plan works to create a backlog of tasks that “can be done.”
Commitment Planning (Daily-Weekly Work Plan)
Takes into account the actual completion of prerequisite tasks and actual availability of material and defines what “will be done.”

6. We have problems when we ignore the gap!
Should-Can-Will
Hierarchical levels of planning for construction production:
Initial Planning (Master Planning)
Should be done
Lookahead Planning (Look Ahead Window)
Can be done
Commitment Planning (Daily-Weekly Work Plan)
Will be done
This is hard!
Ballard and Howell define three hierarchical levels of planning for construction production:
Initial Planning (Master Planning)
Produces the master schedule and triggers the initial push system for material flow. The master plan defines what “should be done.”
Lookahead Planning (Look Ahead Window)
Takes into account that current status of the production system and proactively adjusts budgets and schedules, pulling resources into play in order to avoid or mitigate deviations from the master plan. The lookahead plan works to create a backlog of tasks that “can be done.”
Commitment Planning (Daily-Weekly Work Plan)
Takes into account the actual completion of prerequisite tasks and actual availability of material and defines what “will be done.”
We have problems when we ignore the gap!

7. Should-Can-Will
Its not just a question of more detail in the master schedule:
Master schedules do not include sufficient detail to reflect the true and relevant interactions and dependencies between production units.
Many key interactions not reflected in the plans at all
There are limits to the detail that can be included and maintained in a master schedule.
Many of these interactions are part of the “standard process”
not reflected in the project plans at all
left as references to organizational procedures.
Can complex projects with high variability really be managed solely through he enforcement of the Master Schedule?

8. The Last Planner System of Production Control
Transition slide

9. The Last Planner System of Production Control
Five Principles of the Last Planner:
Principle #1 - Work assignments should be sound regarding their prerequisites (shielding).
Principle #2 - The realization of assignments is measured and monitored (PPC).
Principle #3 - Causes for non-realization are investigated and those causes are removed (work flow).
Principle #4 - Maintain a buffer of tasks which are sound for each crew (pull versus push).
Principle # 5 - The prerequisites of upcoming assignments are actively made ready (work flow).
“The Last Planner is an active production control system that actively causes events to conform to plan rather than responding to after-the-fact detection of variance to plan.”
Soundness
material is on hand and prerequisite assignments are complete
coordination with other production units has been done

10. Variability = Uncertainty
The Last Planner
The Last Planner implements these principles with a set of rules, procedures and tools directed at:
Work Flow Control
Improving work flow between production teams/units:
Production Control
Improving work flow within the “production teams/units.”
The principle of work flow reliability is at the core of lean production:
Every production unit is a customer of someone else.
When upstream commitments are not met, the resulting unplanned variability flows to the next downstream production unit.
Sometimes this variability can be absorbed, sometimes it creates minor problems and sometimes the resulting impact is catastrophic.
Work flow control is about preventing and mitigating the variability/uncertainty and its effects on the units downstream in the workflow.
Variability = Uncertainty

11. Defined by seven steps performed on a weekly basis.
Lookahead Process
Week 5-4
Week 3-2
Week 1-0
Backlog
Weekly Work Plan
Master Schedule
Tasks scheduled to start or stop in the look ahead window.
Tasks translated into assignments
Assignments that are ready
Assignments that can be made ready
Actions to Program Management and SEIT to maintain work flow
Feedback from teams on task completion and reasons for non-completion
Updates to the
master schedule
The Look Ahead Window process consists of seven steps performed on a weekly basis:
Step 1 – Analyze project master schedule and identify those tasks planned for completion in the next 6 weeks.
Step 2 – (1-2 weeks out) Move “ready tasks” to commitment plans based on quality criteria
Step 3 – (3-4 weeks out) Identify those tasks that cannot be “made ready” when scheduled; attempt to pull ready work forward; identify actions needed to make work ready for all tasking in the week 3-4 lookahead window.
Step 4 – (5 weeks out) Identify those tasks in the master scheduled planned to either start or complete in the Week-5 lookahead window and screen out those tasks that will meet schedule based on current status.
Step 5 - Translate Week 1 tasks into the language of production assignments, identifying highly interdependent assignments that should be planned as a whole and tasks that must be jointly planned between multiple production units, teams or crews.
Step 6 - Calculate the earned value or labor hours in the Week 1 commitment plan and compare to the work rate required to maintain schedule. If the planned effort is below that needed to maintain schedule, pull ready work forward from the week 2-4 look ahead windows as allowed by sequencing and readiness. If the work cannot be identified, reduce the work force and reflected the impact on the master schedule. If there is more work than can be accomplished, decide whether to add labor resources or reduce the scope of effort in the commitment plan.
Step 7- Review all action items needed to make work in the lookahead window ready, track and report status until actions are closed and tasks are ready to work. Report the impact of tasks that fail to achieve ready to work status when schedule.
Defined by seven steps performed on a weekly basis.

12. Lookahead Process
The Lookahead Process helps the project accomplishes six important functions:
Shape work flow sequence and rate
Match work flow and capacity
Decompose master schedule activities into work packages and operations
Develop detailed methods for executing work
Maintain a backlog of ready work
Update and revise higher level schedules as needed

13. Look Ahead Process
The Look Ahead Window process consists of seven steps performed on a weekly basis:
Step 1 – Analyze project master schedule and identify those tasks planned for completion in the next 6 weeks.
Step 2 – (1-2 weeks out) Move “ready tasks” to commitment plans based on quality criteria
Step 3 – (3-4 weeks out) Identify those tasks that cannot be “made ready” when scheduled; attempt to pull ready work forward; identify actions needed to make work ready for all tasking in the week 3-4 lookahead window.
Step 4 – (5 weeks out) Identify those tasks in the master scheduled planned to either start or complete in the Week-5 lookahead window and screen out those tasks that will meet schedule based on current status.

14. Look Ahead Process
The Look Ahead Window process consists of seven steps performed on a weekly basis:
Step 5 - Translate Week 1 tasks into the language of production assignments, identifying highly interdependent assignments that should be planned as a whole and tasks that must be jointly planned between multiple production units, teams or crews.
Step 6 - Calculate the earned value or labor hours in the Week 1 commitment plan and compare to the work rate required to maintain schedule. If the planned effort is below that needed to maintain schedule, pull ready work forward from the week 2-4 look ahead windows as allowed by sequencing and readiness or adjust resources.
Step 7- Review all action items needed to make work in the lookahead window ready, track and report status until actions are closed and tasks are ready to work. Report the impact of tasks that fail to achieve ready to work status when schedule.

15. Managing Workflow versus Managing Tasks
Work Flow Control
TFV View of Management
Transformation View
Focuses on identification of tasks within a project and the transformation of inputs to outputs.
Hierarchical decomposition and control
Flow View
Focuses on the movement of work and materials between resources.
Also focuses on the elimination of waste from the flow process
Value Generation View
Focuses on achieving best possible value from the point of view of the customer.
In his paper describing the need for a theory of construction, Koskela proposed that there were three working theories of production:
Managing Workflow versus Managing Tasks

16. Transformation View The key weakness of the Transformational View:
Views the entire project as individual tasks to be decomposed into smaller tasks, each minimized in terms of cost and schedule.
It ignores everything else.
Task based model of the project may not be a complete, accurate or up to date representation of the project.
It creates an environment where:
Interaction between project management and executing organization takes on the characteristics of contract management.
The plan becomes the agreement
How the executing organization gets the job done is “their business”, as long as they meet their commitments of budget and schedule. “
“…the conversion process model conceals everything that needs to be revealed..”

17. The lookahead process implements a work flow view for the project.
The flow view model brings visibility to time and work flow variability, the primary sources of waste.
Addresses flow of material and information (processing, inspection, moving and waiting)
Focuses on elimination of waste, time reduction, and variability reduction.
Brings continuous flow, pull production control, and continuous improvement into play.
Finally, it focuses on minimization of unnecessary activity.
The lookahead process implements a work flow view for the project.

18. Work Flow Control
Work flow control acknowledges the space between production units:
Every production unit is a customer of someone else.
When upstream commitments are not met, the resulting unplanned variability flows to the next downstream production unit.
Sometimes this variability can be absorbed, sometimes it creates minor problems and sometimes the resulting impact is catastrophic.
This slide introduces work flow variability/uncertainty as the real problem we are trying to address.
Also frames the SE lifecycle as a workflow.
Work flow control is about preventing and mitigating the variability/uncertainty and its effects on the units downstream in the workflow.

19. Production Control
Production control consists of production planning, material coordination, work load control, work order release and production unit control
It is the progressively more detailed shaping and management of material and information flows.
Methods for reducing work flow variability within the “production unit” include:
Shielding – enforcing quality criteria
Percent Plan Complete
Others (not presented here)

20. Shielding
Shielding is achieved through enforcement of quality criteria on production assignments in the weekly work plan:
Definition
Soundness
Sequence
Size
Definition
work assignments are specific enough to identify resources required and coordination issues
it is possible to tell at the end of the week of the assignment was completed.
Soundness
material is on hand and prerequisite assignments are complete
coordination with other production units has been done
Sequence
the assignment advances the progress of the project and is sound with respect to the order of tasks
Size
the assignment is sized to the production capacity of the production unit and can be completed within the plan period.

21. Shielding
Shielding is very much in contrast to the most common approach seen in construction production - flexibility.
reacting to whatever work, tasking or lack of work that flows to the production unit and mobilizing resources
adjusting work schedules or changing work sequence to match the latest events
In other words, flexibility is accepting suboptimal work conditions within the production unit
Enforcing quality criteria on the weekly production plan is the construction equivalent to the lean manufacturing principle of stopping production rather than passing a bad product down the production line.

22. Shielding Shielding may have negative consequences:
Reduced production capacity from task starvation
Schedule delay (may not be applicable to critical path)
Refusing to shield may also have negative consequences :
Increased work in progress (WIP)
Lower quality, higher rework rates, lower throughput
Increased complexity of coordination
Less motivation by the project to correct the problems

23. Percent Plan Complete PPC =
PPC is primarily related to Production Unit Control and maximizing efficiency of the production crews
It measures the productions units ability to perform to their plan
PPC is reported and the metrics are used for root cause analysis to improve work flow
Number of planned activities completed
Total number of planned activities

24. Application the SE Lifecycle
Can be applied to any workflow in the SE lifecycle where personnel, predecessor tasks, material, data or other elements are a precondition to task success
Applicable to any project element where performing to cost and schedule is paramount
Application can be expanded or focused on those aspect of the project that would benefit:
Integration and Test
Prototype/First Article Development
Workflows with complex team/group dependencies
Any work flow with subcontractors
Can be used to protect low density, high value resources.

25. Barriers to Improvement
Problems are ignored or not seen
Problems a direct result of the management model and are so systemic, they are viewed as “normal features of the business”
“Can Do” culture
This culture makes it difficult for the subordinate team to refuse poor assignments
Fostered by the “hero culture” and “crisis junkies”
Planning is hard work
There is often a resistance to perform continuous detail planning throughout the project
Most organizations find it easier to react to events than to work to prevent the problem in the first place
The “CAN DO!” attitude combined with the resistance to perform the hard work of detailed planning reinforces the strategy of flexibility as opposed to production control.

26. Questions??