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    Process Metrics

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    peejay
    The document discusses metrics that engineering departments should consider measuring. It recommends 5 key metrics: 1) Process metrics like estimation accuracy and schedule variance, 2) Quality metrics like engineering changes and first pass yield, 3) Technical metrics regarding computer uptime and file management, 4) People metrics like turnover rate and absenteeism, and 5) Skills matrix to track employee training. The document emphasizes that metrics should be continually evaluated and adapted to changes in business and customers.

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    Process Metrics

    Uploaded by

    peejay
    38 views3 pages
    The document discusses metrics that engineering departments should consider measuring. It recommends 5 key metrics: 1) Process metrics like estimation accuracy and schedule variance, 2) Quality metrics like engineering changes and first pass yield, 3) Technical metrics regarding computer uptime and file management, 4) People metrics like turnover rate and absenteeism, and 5) Skills matrix to track employee training. The document emphasizes that metrics should be continually evaluated and adapted to changes in business and customers.

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    The document discusses metrics that engineering departments should consider measuring. It recommends 5 key metrics: 1) Process metrics like estimation accuracy and schedule variance, 2) Quality metrics like engineering changes and first pass yield, 3) Technical metrics regarding computer uptime and file management, 4) People metrics like turnover rate and absenteeism, and 5) Skills matrix to track employee training. The document emphasizes that metrics should be continually evaluated and adapted to changes in business and customers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    38 views3 pages

    Process Metrics

    Uploaded by

    peejay
    The document discusses metrics that engineering departments should consider measuring. It recommends 5 key metrics: 1) Process metrics like estimation accuracy and schedule variance, 2) Quality metrics like engineering changes and first pass yield, 3) Technical metrics regarding computer uptime and file management, 4) People metrics like turnover rate and absenteeism, and 5) Skills matrix to track employee training. The document emphasizes that metrics should be continually evaluated and adapted to changes in business and customers.

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    Article:

    There are literally hundreds of metrics that business leaders can use to run their business today. 
    Some are very valuable, some not so much. For Engineering, think of an engineer as a
    continually developing employee who will take years, if not decades, to become fully trained and
    proficient in a field of study.  So the focus of metrics should not only be in performing a task on
    time and within budget, but also developing said engineer through training and daily challenges.

    Listed below are 5 areas of metrics you should consider for your engineering department.  Why 5
    metrics?  Why not 3, or 2, or 20?  There’s not a right answer here, but the metrics you measure
    should say something about your business and what stage your company is in.  The right number
    of metrics is the number you LOOK AT!  Companies spend gobs of money collecting numbers
    and data they will never see!  The saying is “What’s measured, get’s managed”, a reverse to that
    could be “Don’t measure what you don’t manage”…if it’s not important to you to run your day
    to day department or company, then why measure it?  Each business is unique, use the
    information below as a starting point and if you have no metrics, my advice would be to pick
    one, start there, and add more as needed.  As long as you are continually looking at the data
    collected and making adjustments, you can do no wrong.

    I’m also a strong believer in ever changing metrics.  Your business and customers change month
    to month, year to year, so should what you measure from your employees.  A stale metric
    becomes one no one looks at and wasted time spent collecting…keep them fresh!  A benefit of
    this is if you happen to choose the wrong metric.  Say you measure quality but that has a
    negative effect on your on time delivery, then you can change it.  Changing metrics keeps
    employees on their toes.

    The first three metrics listed below are what I call “general metrics”, these are elements that you
    should measure but how you measure and what you measure will vary depending on your
    company and the role engineering plays.  The last two are more specific, but I consider them
    fundamentally important (engineering or other).

    Process Metrics

    These have to do with the daily processes and what could be called “Value Added Time” that
    your engineers spend on task.  For those not involved with “Lean” this would be any task that
    contributes towards the bottom line, or for an engineer, if you bill for a task then it could be
    considered Value Added.  Remember, you don’t bill for Engineering changes, Revisions, or
    Paperwork (outside of some reports).

    Some examples of process style metrics to measure: 

     Estimation Accuracy
     Scope Variance
     Schedule Variance
     Productivity (hrs worked vs. hrs billed)
     Order processing time
     Response time to RFQ
     Product development Cycle time
     Product development cost
     On time delivery

    Quality Metrics

    Quality metrics are pretty easy to discern, anything that relates to the quality of the product
    coming out of Engineering or the quality of information going in.  Remember, no matter what
    your operation is you are shooting for 100% First time success.  Many will say “this is
    impossible in our industry”, it may be tough to achieve but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be the
    goal.  Engineering departments and companies become very comfortable with accepting less
    than perfect results.  No doubt, there’s often more variables in Engineering’s success that clouds
    that “perfect” result, but we should strive for it none the less.

    Some examples of quality style metrics:

     Number of Engineering changes


     Number of revisions (Depending on your business, revisions could be a bad thing)
     First pass yield
     Six Sigma for Engineering
     Customer satisfaction (Engineering’s customer, not end user)
     Supplier defect rate (often the supplier is whoever is supplying specs and info to
    Engineering)

    Technical Metrics

    This is a big one that is often ignored.  Computers and software are just as critical to Engineering
    as a CNC machine is to your production capability.  I’ve seen companies that invest heavily in IT
    and those that do not, when it comes to Engineering those that don’t, suffer.  Think of
    Engineering as another equipment operator on your production floor (albeit a highly paid one)
    and any minute that he or she has to wait for a computer to load, an analysis to run, or a model to
    refresh is costing the company money.  Hold your IT to the same level as your Industrial
    Maintenance person and use metrics to determine if computer downtime is costing you money or
    causing a bottleneck. 

    Some examples of IT Metrics:

     Computer/Software Uptime
     Preventative Maintenance
     % of files managed by a PDM software

    People Metrics

    As you make these investments in process, quality, and technical improvements you need to keep
    your Engineers/Designers engaged and employed at YOUR company.  Turnover rate and
    Absenteeism will tell you all you need to know.  Frequently absent or sick employees, typically
    do not enjoy his/her job and that employee leaving in the next few months is a high possibility. 
    What’s worse is those that don’t leave, but instead become a cancer upon your organization, until
    you take action. 

    Watch turnover rate as well, a lot of dollars in training and knowledge is lost when an engineer
    decides to go elsewhere.  The cost to replace a technical employee such as an engineer could be
    as much as 1.5 times their annual salary2…Ouch!

    Skills Matrix

    On the other side of the spectrum, a happy Engineer without training and development has
    equally negative effects.  A field like engineering revolves around technical software and
    scientific information, there are always new things to learn.  Look into developing a skills matrix
    and training budget, as well as training days that engineers use to sharpen their skills.  If you
    haven’t seen a skills matrix, google will help, just list every skill you could possibly like that
    engineer to have and then make the chart public.  Hidden charts offers no challenge, and
    employees often have an area they think they are skilled in, when you feel differently.  If you do
    a skills chart and find that your employees are highly qualified in each skill…then you probably
    don’t have the right skills listed.

    I hope you this information helps you and your organization become engaged with metrics, it’s a
    great place to go when you have a problem that you’re not sure how to solve.  Typically, when
    you measure that problem area, it magically starts to fix itself!  Rye Design offers Engineer
    training and organizational help, if we could be of assistance in these areas, let us know.

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