Week 3

Before we will proceed with the next topics, let us have a quick review on what was shared
in the previous meeting…

We were able to elaborate the nature of work by Engineering Managers, what are those
entities that an Engineering manager will deal with?
1. Work with superior
2. Work with self
3. Work with subordinates
4. Work with peers, staff and people
5.
We elaborate on the EEFs and OPAs, what does EEF means? What does OPAs mean? EEF –
Enterprise Environmental Factors | OPA – Organizational Process Assets

We have an introduction on the core topics of this course,

When you hear the word, PLANNING? What comes first in your mind?
1. Planning – a major function of engineering management, is the work done by an
engineering manager to predetermine a course of action. Planning defines who
will do What, How, Where, When, with which resources , and for what objectives.
The purpose of planning is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the
company by providing focus and direction.

Strategic planning sets the goals, purpose, and direction of a company. The top-level engineering
managers are usually involved in strategic planning for the company.

Strategic planning focuses on identifying worthwhile future activities. Specifically, strategic

planning ensures that the company applies its resources – core competencies, corporate know-
how, proprietary technologies, skilled manpower resources, business relationships, and so on –
effectively to achieve the short – and long-term goals of the company.

Managers at both middle level and lower level perform operational planning to define the specific
tactics and action steps needed to accomplish the goals specified by top management. Managers
and directors break down the company goals into short-term objectives. Supervisors and group
leaders specify events and tasks that can be implemented with the least amount of resources
within the shortest period time. Operational planning ensures that the company applies its
resources efficiently to achieve its stated goals.

The Strategic Planning deals or answers the following questions, there are 9 major questions, but
you can formulate your own as long it can help you do the strategic planning.

1. The mission statement of a company defines why the company exists in the first place,
which market segments it serves, and what it will do to serve them. The vision statement
spells out the aspirations of the company with respect to its asset size, market position,
 business standing, ranking in industrial sectors and other such metrics. The value system is
the externalization of five or six specific corporate values emphasized by the company,
Some typical values are quality, innovation, social responsibility, stability, honesty, quality
of life, and empowerment.

2. Read the slide

3. Strategies of constant change develop a chameleon culture in which the organization seeks to
reinvent itself to become leaner, flatter, more flexible, and more profitable.

1. Prediction of the future: Certain future events are more predictable than others; for example,
seasonal variations of weather and election-year cycles. Other predictions, such as the forecast of
discontinuities-technological innovations, price increases, changes in governmental regulations
affecting marketplace competition, geopolitical turbulences, and so on-are virtually impossible to
predict accurately.

2. Applicable experience and insight: Strategies cannot be detached from the subject involved.
Planners must have in-depth knowledge and relevant hands-on experience of the subject at hand in
order to set forth useful strategies.

3. Random process of strategy making: The strategy-making process cannot be formalized, as it is

not a deductive, but a synthesis process.

Studies have shown that strategic plans often fail due to one or more of the following seven
reasons:

1. Not thinking strategically; for example, by limiting the strategy only to the short- term needs and
processes of the company.

2. Failure to identify critical success factors for the company.

3. Not having both an internal and an external focus.

4. Lack of long-term commitment from company management.

5. Reluctance of senior management to accept responsibility for tough decisions.

6. Not leaving enough flexibility in the plans, thus causing difficulties in adjusting to the changing
environment.

7. Failure to properly communicate the plan and thus not securing support and management buy-
in.

1. Deduction: Based on data, managers invoke general administrative and economic principles to a
specific situation, weigh alternatives, and make rational choices. This method needs a lot of data,
and is useful for mature and stable industries.
2. Trial and error. Experiment with several options and select one. This is good for ambiguous, novel,
or complex situations in order to experiment and learn from the experience.

3. Analogies: Various strategies are made by analogies. Decision-makers often need to think back
to a familiar situation, draw lessons from it, and apply those les- sons to the current situation.
However, making decision by analogy must be done carefully.

When you need to do a strategic planning for your product or services, you have to know your
advantages from your competitors.

The Venn diagram has 3 items, the company’s offering, competitor’s offering and customer needs.

Operational planning involves a process of analysis by which a corporate goal or a set of corporate
intentions is to be accomplished by performing a group of action steps. These steps are then
formalized for easy implementation. Furthermore, the consequences for the business are
articulated at each step. Operational planning focuses on the preservation and rearrangement of
established categories (e.g., major strategies defined by upper management, existing products, and
organizational structures). Operational planning is essentially a programming task that is aimed at
making the attainment of various strategic goals possible. Operational planning is also called
platform-based planning because it extrapolates future results from a well-understood, predictable
platform of past experience. The results of such planning are predictable because they are based
on solid knowl- edge rather than assumptions.

Compared with strategic planning, operational planning is easier for engineers to accomplish
because past experience and examples are usually available as references.

2.5.1 Time Management

All managers need to plan and prioritize their personal daily tasks (such as problem solving, staff
meetings, task specification, progress monitoring, and performance evaluation), according to the
value each task may add, so that high-value tasks are completed before others. This is to maximize
the value contributed by their daily activities. Also to be included in the daily to-do list are tasks
such as networking, continuing education, and scanning emerging technologies, which are deemed
important for advancing one's own career.

2.5.2 Projects and Programs

Engineering managers need to plan projects and programs assigned to them by upper
management. In doing so, they need to fully understand the applicable project objectives, the
relevant performance metrics used to measure outcome, and the significance of this outcome to
the company. They should carefully select staff members with the relevant skills, expertise, and
personality to participate in the project and seek their inputs regarding tasks, resource
requirements, preferred methodologies, and task duration. They should then integrate all inputs to
draft a project plan and distribute the plan among all participants to iteratively finalize the relevant
details. These details include budgets, deliverables, and dates of completion. Managers must also
secure authorization from upper management before initiating work related to the projects and
programs.

2.5.3 Corporate Know-How

The preservation of corporate know-how is of critical importance to the company for maintaining
and enhancing its competitiveness in the marketplace. Corporate know- how comes in many types
and forms. Certain documentable knowledge, such as patents, published memoranda, operational
manuals, and troubleshooting guides, is easy to save. Others, such as insights related to
procedures or perfected ways of designing the specific products and services of the company, may
require extra efforts to preserve. Managers should plan to systematically capture, retain, and widely
disseminate such know-how to maximize its use within the company. Certain other cognitive
knowledge is typically retained mentally by the experts. Managers need to find effective ways to
induce such

experts to willingly externalize this tacit knowledge for use by others in the company. Problem-
solving expertise is yet another type of corporate know-how worth preserv- ing. Typically,
engineering managers are busy resolving conflicts that may arise from dis- agreements in task
priorities, personality conflicts, customer complaints, interpretation of data, and other conflicts.
Managers need to solve these problems promptly. They should be mentally prepared to jump from
one task to another to handle such time-sensitive issues. What should be planned under these
circumstances is the preservation of the learning experience garnered from each incident so that
the company will become more efficient in solving similar problems in the future.

2.5.4 Proactive Tasks

Engineering managers should plan to devote their efforts to proactively pursue certain other tasks.
These tasks include

Utilizing new technologies to simplify and enhance the products and services of the company.

Creating business networks and searching for partners to form mutually benefi- cial alliances.

Offering new or enhanced services to customers (e.g., self-service, an information- on-demand

system, and an Internet-based inquiry center).

Initiating new programs to promote healthy customer relationships.

• Developing novel products/services with distinguishable attributes (e.g., product

customization to serve customers better, cheaper, and faster).

• Reengineering and simplifying specific operational processes to increase efficiency.

* Outsourcing specific tasks to augment cost-effectiveness and to reduce time to market.

Market research applies a number of tools to discover the preference of customers with respect to
the company's products, services, marketing strategy, product prices, competitive strengths, and
brand reputation in the marketplace.

SWOT is the abbreviation for strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. Each com- pany has
strengths and weaknesses in comparison to its competitors.

Spreadsheets are useful in modeling the financial performance of an operation. Financial

statements are usually modeled in a spreadsheet program. What-if analyses are readily performed
to discover the sensitivity of the company's financial performance relative to the changes of
specific input variables.

Scenario planning defines the major forces that may move a company in different directions, maps
out a small number of alternatives futures (scenarios), defines narratives describe these scenarios,
and develops options for managing within these future worlds.

Performance Benchmarks are those that have been successfully applied by successful firms in the
same or a related industry.

Technology forecasting is of critical importance to those companies whose products are composed
of high-technology components. Companies must constantly examine, monitor, and apply
emerging technologies to enhance business performance.

Every product has a life cycle that moves typically through the stages of initiation, growth, market
saturation, and decline. Engineering managers need to examine the life cycles of all products
marketed by their enterprises. Doing so will guide them in introducing new products or product
enhancements in a timely manner in order to sustain company profitability.