CONTINOUS REPLANNING IS TOXIC TO SHIPBUILDING; VALID BASELINES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

A recent article “The Way Ahead Unfolds as Progress is Achieved” is reflective of the mindset that “we have to implement the legislation to understand it.” This is a dangerous way to operate when the livelihoods of thousands of people rely upon the ability of company to successfully operate in the industry they inhabit; this is especially true for U.S. shipbuilding where the infrastructure and national assets have been devastated over the past fifty years and are seeing signs of new growth among burgeoning firms growing to new levels of capability that promise the restoration of some of what has been lost. The tone of the article is that we have to proceed with what we know in order to determine the next steps; years ago this mentality was strictly confined to the research and development world, but now it is becoming so common place that major acquisition programs are being allowed to operate this way. The tolerance of this mentality is allowing a “plan as you go” looseness to creep into areas where this approach is building in so much uncertainty and risk that people are rightfully responding with incredulity at acquisition costs and schedules of major programs, but they do not have an answer to get the genie back in the bottle.

CONSTANT REPLANNING VERSUS WORKING TO A BASELINE: THE CRITICAL DIFFERENCE THAT COSTS MILLIONS

After being in many situations to personally observe different shipbuilding companies to witness the struggle of how differences are addresses from firm to firm, there is a conviction that has emerged that goes back to the trite saying, “Plan the work; work the plan.” The saying is not trite because it is not true; it is trite because it is so commonly refered to without having an appreciation of what it really means. A “baseline” plan refers to a master plan that one constantly refers to that will tell anyone, anywhere, at any time, where they are in the process of executing a program. It must be as reliable as a navigation chart that people can use to successfully navigate the pathway across even the most treacherous stretch of water to get safely to their objective. The current challenge in many shipbuilding companies is that many have no confidence in the plans that are put in place to navigate their way from contract award to the successful completion and delivery of their ships. The other option is to bring a pilot onboard who knows the details of the body of water so intimately that they can read the landmarks, tides, currents, weather, ship behavior, and navigation in an area to assist in the navigation, but if you require their assistance you must surrender a large amount of control and responsibility and place that confidence in the single individual. One knows they are in trouble when captains or pilots do not have such intimate knowledge or has lost the confidence of their knowledge in the waters they are in; this is observable by their abandonment of the charts and instruments and resort to a flurry of activity in taking soundings, sightings, bearings, and issue constant streams of adjusting orders, some of which are in contradiction to the previous making it difficult to forecast just where the path will lead. Rather than resorting to the almost mystical approach of steamboat captains in Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, it is far better to have the reliable road maps that can be used to put baseline plans in place from which to confidently navigate one’s progress through the different treacherous phases of shipbuilding.

Reliable maps can be put in place to navigate the different phases, but it is commonly misunderstood what this means. For example, shipbuilding plans are very extensive with many moving parts that have to work together to make progress. Let’s propose that a plan is thought through very well but tomorrow (day, week, month or quarter) things don’t work out how the plan said they should. What does one do? If one passively accepts what they get, then new plans will be required to account for what has been achieved in order to keep things moving and people productively engaged. This person who accepts what they get without an aggressive response to maintain the original plan will engage in a creating a new masterful plan, and yet tomorrow they will not get everything they planned and new plans will also then have to be developed. Not achieving activities becomes a normal part of the culture because it has been demonstrated that there will not be any significant response or repercussions and that future plans will accommodate the state of non-performance as it was (because henceforward it will generally degrade). It is proposed here and will be discussed in greater detail below that continuous re-planning is even more detrimental to quality, cost, and schedule than no plan at all.

To the contrary, even when the information is available, the person who receives the feedback about what got done and what did not get done and then sets about remediating the delinquencies will be fighting against the strongest, steadiest, and most challenging of forces, organizational entropy. While a good plan will provide a coherent pathway, there also must be a will applied to ensure that the opposing factors are addressed and brought into compliance with the program in a constructive way that contributes to forward progress in the same way that an individual has to marshal their internal fortitude to undertake a disciplined training program for reaching new levels of personal accomplishment. Executives, leaders, and managers must exercise their collective will of the company to undertake the implementation of the disciplines necessary to do what is necessary to achieve the objectives. The senior leadership team must be cohesive and united enough to unearth, understand, weigh options, and then implement the necessary responses in ways that will build the confidence of others in both outlook and competency to eliminate delinquencies, control the temptations to engage in out-of-sequence activities, and bring a sense of calm in the midst of a storm of disruption that the relentless reactivity in response to fire drills may have normalized.

THERE IS AN OPTIMAL & RELIABLE WAY TO BUILD SHIPS

NOTE: The following discussion assumes a Detail Design & Construction contract with a requirement for the Function Engineering/Design to be completed either by a preceding contract or by a requisite completion milestone before Detail Design (production engineering) can begin and certainly before the Production Readiness Review (PRR) authorizes production through the manufacturing, and construction begins on tangible products..

The patterns of necessary sequences and criteria requiring levels of maturity of the program work scope before subsequent phases are undertaken is clear enough to veteran shipbuilders and are the subject of previous articles to illustrate the concepts of these critical relationships. A few of the illustrations communicating those principles are referenced below but for their full address the articles should be consulted. The bottom line is that each phase of shipbuilding requires a level of maturity in the preceding phases before success in the current phase can be expected. The maturity requirements result in completion criteria form the basis of an Integrated Management Plan. Also addressed is that the fundamental building blocks of ship construction are the manufacture of units/modules for which there are generations of reliable basis for the prescriptive pattern for achieving every process step to get an effective flow through the unit manufacturing pipe. In addition, today there are powerful tools in the scheduling of the critical work activities and their most important dependent relationships so that very useful management tools can be created in schedules and the establishment of baseline plans from which to measure performance. Lastly, the fundamental need to track the progress by % complete through each process step is essential but has been allowed to be overwhelmed with all the new strategies and tools. Finding the right people with a thorough understand all the principles, rather than just an isolated few, requires people with both the training and knowledge, but also the experience. There is nothing like those who have been chewed to smithereens by past problems to know the intangible tactile nuances about the way that all the machinery should work together. Young people (and I was one of them) fall victim to being convinced that there is not anything that they will face that they cannot mentally prepare for given the time and effort to fully considered the situation, but veterans of conflagrations know all too well that know no matter how much you study, train, and prepare for tumultuous encounters, there is nothing like real experience to fully understand and appreciate the magnitude of all that is involved, and even then it will take years to fully garner the lessons that such experiences reveal. There is a big gulf of difference between those who think they know and those who actually know from the scars of many campaigns and still survive to engage.

VALID & RELIABLE SHIPBUILDING PLANS (A)

Reliable principles and patterns must be inherently built into the program plan. A schedule must be built of the essential steps representing the process steps from beginning to end, but the SOWs in the Work Packages in this schedule must be clearly understood as to completion criteria. It is the loose or incomplete allowance of letting things go, that should be completed at each step of the process, on unresolved into future phases that will destroy a schedule, especially when moving from engineering to production. The best way to do this is an Integrated Management Plan (IMP) as an overarching guide to the development of the baseline schedule. A well-developed IMP will include the important milestones and the entrance and exit criterial for achieving victory of milestone completion including both: 1) specific details of completion activities and products, and 2) an address of the overall program scope that is planned for satisfaction at the time in which the milestone is intended to be completed.

The baseline plan is a management plan and by definition should be configured so that the definition of Work Packages along with the logic dependency network across the entire scope of the program from contract award to delivery can be achieved. The U.S. Department of Defense guidance is detrimental to shipbuilding, because if the Functional Engineering is as complete as it should be at the Critical Design Review (specified, analyzed, arranged, and essentially routed), then shipbuilding processes allow for a complete baseline to be established by Work Package level definition (1. System [ESWB] – 2. Organization [Dept & Process Step] – 3. Unit/Module/Ship Area). The illustration below is taken directly from the DoD Earned Value Management System Interpretation Guide (EVMSIG) and shows that massive amounts of scope remain in Summary Level Planning Packages (SLPPs).

If this condition as represented by the DOD illustration is allowed to exist, then there is significant scope that cannot be identified by to a Control Account that consists of two attributes: 1) system (ESWBS), and 2) the organization that will be responsible for its build (typically divided responsibilities among shipbuilding [Engineering, Supply Chain, Planning, Production] process steps). If the information remains that vague, two predominating risks are immediately evident of either: 1) the Functional Design of the systems are not complete enough to estimate for a DD&C contract, or 2) the Functional Design is complete, but the shipyard does not have sufficient definition in their organization and process to know what departments will engineer, procure, plan, and produce the work. Either of these situations begs the question about how the work was estimated and the reliability of the quality, cost, and schedule estimates regarding the scope of work that was negotiated into the contract. If in fact the scope is clear, the systems identified, where in the process the work will be completed (Organization), and on which units/modules the systems will be a part of, then there is no reason that the Work Packages cannot be defined and accurately represented in the baseline plan; this is consistent with other DOD guidance that work should be defined enough to be properly estimated so that reliable contract negotiations can be completed, and then, when the contract modification is processed, it can be quickly (within two or three accounting periods) released to the distributed baseline.

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS VS DESKTOP/DECKPLATE EXECUTION SYSTEMS (B)

It may be difficult to imagine for those that have been in the machine for so long there are those who do not realize the difference between management systems and M/ERPs. For the management level plan (Work Packages) in building ships there is a corresponding set of task orders (Work Orders) that can literally be from 20,000 to over 100,000 task orders to complete all the work that goes into building the ship. Too many times people want to make the management plan be the end all for building the ship that results in insufficient detail, or on the other hand, since they have a population of Work Orders, they attempt to make this into the management plan, which has far too many details to make effective an a management tool, nor could a viable logic structure be applied at this level for any ship of significant size. In the end, there is a need for both.

Every shipyard producing significant sized vessels have some system for addressing the functions that are commonly addressed by M/ERPs, either in specific software applications or in established systems that are feed from a massive database integration approach. The most challenging conversations about management systems are largely of two types: 1) those who have advanced throughout their careers utilizing the detail data to such a degree and with such a level of proficiency that it is their conviction that everyone should be able to understand and operate at comparable levels of proficiency and sophistication achieved through decades of using the company’s systems, and 2) those who are so familiar with management level reports and information that they are very unfamiliar with the scope of the systems that underlie the operations of the management systems that provide the information they see. The first is a normal human tendency called the “False Consensus Effect” that causes people to see their own behavioral choices, judgments, capabilities, and ways of thinking as relatively common and appropriate to everyone else; this kind of unconscious bias has a tendency to make people seem unsympathetic to the cognitive limitations that others may have simply from not having the same training and background. The second phenomenon testifies to the scope and complexity of shipbuilding organizations; when these revelations dawn on us about others, we should not be shocked or amused because shipbuilding companies are so large and involve so many different functions that this is not an uncommon occurrence that people do not realize the nature of the IT architecture of all the different systems that move the organization. Management systems are intended to be and fulfill the role of higher-level summarizations of the enormous detail; the focus of these systems are in the most powerful and effective communicative representations that enable leadership and management to maintain a continuous knowledge of where the operations have been, where they are, and where they are going in the short and long term future.

THE EFFECTS OF PASSIVE MANAGEMENT (C)

The example in the illustration “(C)” above indicates different effects at the different moments in time (T0, T1, T2, T3…). In this illustration all preceding processes are assumed to be operating perfectly so that there are no extraneous issues or necessary discussions up until the start of production that would detract from the topic. “T0” represents most any program even in good companies with strong planning and execution capabilities; variances will occur. Variances are good things because they identify where things are not getting done and need attention, and where other things are getting done that were not supposed to be (Out-of-Sequence [OOS] work) THAT ALSO REQUIRE MANAGEMENT ATTENTION! T1, T2, and T3 are also not uncommon on programs because it takes time to respond to emerging trends; aircraft carriers do not turn on a dime and neither do shipbuilding organizations respond in an instant to corrective actions.

The illustration highlights that the emphasis of doing what is required to remediate delinquent work is not being selected because of a preference for working what may be readily available by accelerating other activities in the schedule without regard to the impact to other organizations that have a part in the execution of the work. Imagine a procurement/supply chain manager that is very gratified in their ability to execute the purchase orders to ensure that all required material for the planned production work is perfectly on schedule; they are at their desk conscientiously working on and checking the status on the next batch of material that is required for the shipyard when the telephone rings. Direction is coming in from the Planning organization from the Program Office and Craft Superintendents that, instead of the units that they are supposed to work next according to the schedule, they have decided to work other units that they, in consultation with engineering about certain issues with the planned units, appear to be less risky to start work on than those planned. Personnel from the units they are completing must go somewhere and according to the hiring plan, the personnel coming in the gate must be productively applied. The Procurement/Supply Chain manager gathers their people to inform them all of the change in plan. There is an immediate flurry of activity in getting the latest status of procurements on the street and in process to determine what material will be delivered to support the change, what can be accelerated, and what material and equipment cannot meet the “need by dates” driven by the accelerated schedules. What was once an orderly organization working to a well-developed unified plan around which all the activities of the organization have been orchestrated is now set in alarm. The orderly status and continued work on needed procurements for the planned work have been set aside for the new ad hoc direction and the whole organization will have to rush at accelerated speeds to determine the level of supply chain support that can be marshalled for the change in plan.

The planning organization is going through the same situation as the supply chain personnel in order to determine the level of completeness of the engineering documentation that has been confirmed as complete and released for production. They will have to move off of the previously planned units onto the new units, take the inventory of technical documentation, and rush through the scoping, material identification, budgeting, scheduling, and work order document assembly drills at a high rate of speed to feed the demands of the Production organization to ensure maximum productivity of available personnel. This phenomenon is not just taking place in Planning and Supply Chain but will be impacting many people in many organizations who have a vested interest in the program execution activities. The choice to move to different units is one strategy, but by choosing this strategy it has let personnel who were being relied upon to get certain activities completed off the hook. It has moved the attention onto a host of others who were doing their part conscientiously but now are all behind the curve and under the gun to catch up in supporting the change in direction.

Constant re-planning is acceptance of a default destiny. If you have read to this point in this article is it evidence that you are a seasoned member of the community who has recognized the importance of the topic being addressed or are someone from outside who sees the resemblance of these issues with those they have experienced and are seeking to understand and learn from the challenges and responses of others in how to deal with these types of difficult circumstances. A default destiny is one associated with those who accepts the occurrences in life as they passively come to them and without the motivation to develop skills to address other opportunities that could come outside of their direct trajectory, they simply accept what comes to them and do the best they can hoping for miracles. Whether one is in the center of what is occurring or observing from the outside, it is usually a simple matter to project the nature of the pathway and the eventual outcome of this strategy. Replanning from day to day, period to period, based on what has occurred and what one has available to them at any given moment is no more than proceeding down the road of accepting that default destiny.

What is relevant in shipbuilding is that If you don’t have a plan, then the result is obvious to those who understand, and sadly, the equivalent to not having a plan in continual re-planning can be regularly witnessed in many large-scale production activities across the shipbuilding industry. With all the emphasis and millions of dollars spent on the establishment of management systems, including Earned Value (EV), and Performance Measurement Baselines (PMBs), one might be incredulous to hear someone say that we do not have real baseline plans. What we have are plausible sequences of a multitude of activities detailed to various levels that could get a company from contract award to its completion without any real conviction that the plan is as good as any other. What occurs is predictable mediocre or poor performance with a high level of certainty from the repeated patterns and the symptoms supported by countless programs. The underlying root causes are so grave that many do not want or will not address them. What occurs during the execution of these “plausible” plans is that things do not go according to the plan, so therefore the plan is continually reworked with a new strategy with each new plan to account for what has been accomplished with new pathways to get to the end. There are major outcomes from this approach that demonstrate that this strategy is even worse than having no plan at all:

– The outcomes are accepted.

– Accountability is taken off the table because of the lack of conviction that the plans are authoritative.

– Reward for mediocre performance is tolerated, continues, and proliferates.

– Cost increases and schedule delays continue to grow.

– Program Management personnel become little more than reporters of bad news.

– Functional homerooms abandon the necessity of doing what must be done to achieve the plan and adopt the “doing the best they can” approach to their work.

– Demoralized planners will be scorned by phrases “that we need a good plan” and are set to continually re-planning new pathways to get to the ultimate objective with each successive measurement cycle; good and conscientious planners who know the shipbuilding process will leave and compliant exercisers of the software applications will compliantly and laboriously turn the replanning crank on new plans time after time based on the direction that others give them.

– Divergence from the original plan increases to an extent the original plans are never referred to again.

– Manning plans are abandoned and people make ad hoc changes to the distribution of personnel among workstations where progress is perceived as possible.

– The financial balance between expenditures and earnings is destroyed, and the chasing of payment milestones is embraced in order to obtain funds in order to pay the most critical expenses.

– When material and subcontractor payments become outstanding, critical inflows of material and subcontractor support are curtailed to further make it difficult, if not impossible, to continue making progress.

– Requests to corporate ownership are made without the possibility of refusal (otherwise operations would come to a halt) and never indicative of the full potential value of funding required to sustain the current operation to its completion of the project.

– Risk becomes so embedded in the execution of the plan because of the high probability of future interruptions that the current estimates and plans are little to no value.

– The better executives in leadership and manager have a sense of what is coming and become open to consider other opportunities.

– The operation lumbers along in the same consumptive pattern until the company oversight decisively intervenes through selling or spinning off the unprofitable operation, actually assigning competent leadership with the KSAs and experience to lead the organization out of the trench or is shutdown entirely.

– The last 60 years in the U.S. shipbuilding industry has seen this pattern repeated so often that hundreds of shipbuilders have shut their doors. The study of this pattern has been available after the massive closures during from the 1960s to the 1980s, and since that time the consolidation of the industry into top tier shipyards required the Government to pay attention to lower and mid-tier shipyards to enable their survival to the current day. Even in the current situation commercial and Government customers do not have the adequate capable resources to validate the probability of performance of many of these contracts, so they continue to proceed with high levels of uncertainty and risk.

ACTIVE DISCLIPLINED MANAGEMENT TO BASELINE PLANS (D)

The ability to establish management systems is the first competency that enables performance to baseline plans, but the second is the more rare, it is the ability to get people to face the requisite accountability to performing to the plan to a level that supports all downstream activities. A well-used statement in my own head has been that. “If leadership and management were simply about the technical and process details, it would be easy. But it is not, the most challenging part is about people, and the management of the people part of the operation is the key differentiator that will separate those who will be successful and those that will not.” What one does with missed expectations with the people responsible for achieving the objectives is the key differentiator in the kinds of leaders we need today.

The current culture that has rightfully focused on eliminating “hostile environments” has tended to convince people that there is no room left for the difficult conversations that make people highly uncomfortable. Discomfort and working to achieve challenges is what develops our workforce to new levels of proficiency. Not hitting targets is not an unforgiveable sin, but it should not be overlooked either. Finding leaders who will enter into the uncomfortable conversations with those who work for them to earnestly look into the real root causes of what is occurring and working with the cross-departmental resources available to resolve those issues and improve the system so that everyone can succeed is absolutely necessary. Missed objectives are opportunities to grow, to set new objectives, refine expectations for the rate of progress based on the specific details of the reality in which one exists. It takes no small talent to wade through the endless rationales that are given about why things are not occurring to identify the critical essence of those things that will make the difference and set the people on the course to once again make forward progress. This is the challenge that those that have set themselves to the task of building high performing have undertaken; while the technical details in all the engineering phases, the supply chain evolutions that can occur, and the planning and production processes, tools, facilities, etc. are all fascinating subjects, they will not go as they should without the ability to work with the people that will lead the teams that execute the work. Many times reasons sound like excuses; this just depends on the mindset of those who hear them. The reasons are real and must be listened to and investigated in depth, but they cannot be allowed to stand as justifications for not achieving future objectives when they have been adequately addressed. When the workforce sees the leadership and management truly engage to address the barriers to their success, there is in most cases a reciprocating level of engagement increased on the part of the workforce, but it has authentic.

As discussed in a previous article (The “Build” in Shipbuilding), throughput is not something that can be directly affected because it is a variable dependent upon a number of critical factors that are the independent variables that will influence the outcome.

While it may not be the answer some people want to hear, the answers can have a direct component in the process steps not performing, but typically will also have major components somewhere upstream. Because the multivariate nature of the full equation and many different multiplicative effects of the different variables upon one another, it is an undertaking that will take a disciplined patient strategy to define and prioritize what the different drivers are, potential solutions, and approaches for implementation that will maximize clarity in the effectiveness of changes, results to the operation, and provide additional visibility into next steps for implementing continuous improvement. The objective then becomes balancing the difficult forces of leadership and management application of listening and improving so that the same expectation can be legitimately sustained for those in the workforce. When the people see that the leaders and managers are dedicated to making them successful in their jobs and in their careers, the people that one wants to have will respond in like manner to do all that they can to support those that are working for them.

SOME (CERTAINLY NOT ALL) FINDINGS/IMPLICATIONS TO MOVE FROM CONSTANT REPLANNING TO BASELINE PLANS

1.      PERFORMANCE – THE QUALITY MEASURE OF MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

“One’s actions and behaviors speak louder than words ever can.”

The quality of leadership, management systems, and baseline plans is whether they actually lead to good performance. The baseline plan serves to enable the articulation of a plan invested with the leadership direction and management principles to be articulate or documented in such a way to fulfil the admonition and criteria for integrity and good character to “say what one will do, and then do what one said.” One of most important questions that is continually posed to leaders and managers at every level is how much work were we planning to do, and how much of that work actually got done. A baseline plan is a valid basis to answer this question once measures of achieved work are applied.

The most uncomfortable question in the performance management of shipbuilding programs is how much work was actually achieved to the goals that had been set. If you are a shipbuilding executive, leader, or manager, you will have been in countless meetings where personnel have presented the performance on programs that highlight all the magnificent things that had been accomplished without any reference to the elephant in the room of what was supposed to have been completed. Seldom is that that those executives who do ask the question are able to see an initiative all the way through to get the conclusive information about what was planned to be done so that the actual results can be readily compared in an effective and reliable manner. There are so many different views about what should be looked at, how the information is to be obtained, the operational process the data should represent, and the configuration of the systems necessary to enable the leaders and managers. Even when information is available, the ability to define, establish, and regularly sustain a rhythm throughout the company to ensure that the information is being used is as challenging as implementing the systems to make the information available in the first place. So it should be said from the outset that this challenge is monumental, and the efforts of those making the attempt should not be discounted because they are making the effort, which is far more than many who are either intimidated by the prospect or entirely unaware of its significance and not making the earnest effort in any significant way at all.

2.      LEADERSHIP PRIORITIES: OWNERSHIP, COMPETENCY & TEAMWORK

Companies must prepare and submit proposals to execute contracts (not just win). One of the most detrimental decisions that a company can make early in the process is to divide the “trappers” from the “skinners,” and one of the best moves a company can make is to make it clear that those leaders and managers who are responsible for winning contracts will be the same who prepare for and lead the program from its inception to its conclusion. They must know that their ultimate destinies with the company will rely on the ultimate success of the programs they lead.

An advantage of ensuring the continuity of leadership to programs is the necessity of development of future leaders. There is no ideal time personnel to learn their job after they are assigned, but the systematic progression of deputy program managers across the full spectrum of shipbuilding phases from award to delivery is one of the most effective in preparing deputies to move to the leadership role on subsequent programs. In these opportunities, deputies have the opportunity to demonstrate they have the learning acumen, the problem solving skills, and are willing to invest the effort to what is necessary to successfully execute under the leadership of another who will know more certainly the steps that they will be exposed to. During this time it will be important to develop the leadership competencies that must include subject matter competency, communication, emotional intelligence, and the ability to lead, train and develop personnel.

A culture of high performance and skilled team work must trump the fascination of popular programs encouraging the development of all-stars, the collective management approaches that resemble “bunchball,” and the culture destroying use of politics in gaining the upper hand.

In emphasizing high-performance team work there is the need for a skillful nurturing of a balanced set of qualities among the culture. There is the humility required to reach a point where the team’s performance outweighs any personal desire of an individual for their own performance to outshine the team is paramount, but seldom honored in practice. When personnel have momentum in their career and have the benefit of being noticed as “all stars” many companies inadvertently instill a sense of self-esteem based on their own abilities rather than their ability to bring out the full potential of a team. On the other hand there is also the other ditch where because of independent operation not being handled well, the over-emphasis on consensus building and collective action can stall high value initiatives because the lack of assertiveness on the part of a skilled leader to take the initiative, make decisions once the solutions are clear, and move the team to obtaining the objective. These qualities must be encouraged to the greatest extent possible in their proper balance.

The things that must be guarded against are impulsive emotional reactions and politics. It is not everyone who can pick up the phone or be requested to immediately proceed to the president’s office and retain the composure to think calmly and accurately, and this is made exponentially more difficult when they are challenged or confronted with an emotional response about developments about operations; this is a skill that must developed through increasing levels of challenge until the immediate response is to retain equanimity and focus required to respond well when confronted. Teamwork is focused on development of the entire community and the success of the group, while politics is typically a strategy of survival and domination, a dysfunction that divides organizations. While the use of politics may achieve short terms success for a few, ultimately, when not constrained and addressed it will result in the severe deterioration of the company. Team work is far more reliable approach to ensuring the long term thriving of the organization.

3.      MANAGEMENT PLAN COMPLETION CRITERIA MUST INCLUDE TOTAL SCOPE

The completion criteria must not only include the descriptions of specific achievements, but it should also include an often missing component of the overall scope. The illustration below is a rudimentary view of what happens when specific milestone criteria are completed and victory is claimed without an address of the total scope; this condition is called “chasing milestones” and is very detrimental to shipbuilding programs. One of the most detrimental practices is the basis of payments milestones for numbers or percentages of units erected; if the scope of what these units is not defined, what can occur is explicit compliance by the manufacture and erection of completely empty units (the insanity called “stack & tack”) thereby destroying the intent of the milestones to include the normal levels of pre-outfitting should have been completed by any reasonable plan.

4.      ONE BAD MAJOR PROGRAM CAN WREAK HAVOC ON ATHE ENTIRE PORTFOLIO

The issues discussed in the article above have been of necessity limited to a single program, but it is not difficult to imagine the scope of impacts when there are multiple programs in coincidental execution in the shipyard. The increased intensity and volatility that is generated in all of the stakeholder organizations because of a single “bad” program can impact the quality, cost, and schedule of the other programs in the shipyard. This also adds weight to the challenge of trying to implement effective systems because, typically, changes to processes and systems are difficult to implement across the board all at once. Because programs can take many years to make their way through the shipbuilding pipeline from award to delivery, the schedule requirements for “moving the dial” will always be far longer than we would prefer; one must be engaged and committed to the long run.

5.      DETRIMENTAL “EMERGENCY,” “WAR TIME” & “R&D” PLANNING MINDSETS TO PRODUCTION

I will close with this last finding that “Emergency,” “War Time,” and “R&D” have no place in shipbuilding planning and production for fixed-price or share line/incentive contracts because they have a tendency to undermine the discipline necessary for strong execution in manufacturing and construction environments because of the emphasis on being able to react to developing threats. The ability to react to perceived threats must be counterbalanced with the dedication and focus to persistent application to the overall campaign. Some of the famous quotes that have a tendency to undermine the importance of thoughtful planning and committed disciplined execution include:

1.      “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.” – Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

2.      “Possibly, such movements did not enter the original plan; but plans are worthless when the fighting is once begun, and all depends on the inspiration of the moment.” – War correspondent in World War II

3.      “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything, … take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window. …But if you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

These sayings have a tendency to discount planning in the minds of many in preference for action, but while initiative and action are critically important, if the actions are not guided by a plan, then serious trouble is inevitably in the making.

The skills necessary to perceive ad hoc emergent threats to achieving objectives should not be understated because there are many “white knights” that have saved our bacon many times, but the battlefield general does not make a campaign general. In war, and with regard to emergencies as Eisenhower’s quote refers, the challenge is with engagements that leave all possibilities open and that training in potential responses to emergent developments is critical. These skills are instrumental on the battlefield from moment to moment, and even on the production line, because they teach people to remain cool, to think, to quickly review options, and to move with purpose to quick response to resolve the situation. While this mentality has its validity, it does not suit the higher level war planning for campaigns nor does it apply to the planning that can be conducted to produce manufactured products that can be brought forth from reliable processes in a production environment. Battles must be won to win campaigns, but a campaign will never succeed without have someone with the capability to see, understand, and make the hard decisions that a far larger campaign requires.

While George C. Marshall, Jr. is a hero second only to the Lord Jesus Christ, and even though a large picture of him is situated in the front passageway of my home (Marshall) that has been there for years, I understand that a lot of what he did was in being a great wartime general in such a way that focused on doing jobs that were thankless with a conviction he could do them well. He was uniquely prepared from his experiences in World War I to see how insane operations could be, the importance of preparing troops for engagement, and the force of political maneuvering that would be used. He could have been a Patton or an Eisenhower if he had insisted after his direct service to the President, but mentality he was that of a true soldier, committed to the God, to the corps, and to his nation above his own interests, to do the best job where his talents were most needed. Roosevelt recognized that he was the best military strategist and planner that the country had and of a character that people respected his capability, trusted what he said, and perceived his commitment to the good of all not biased by any political party. Roosevelt asked him to remain at his post though personally he desired a frontline command. Marshall was the master of the larger plan that balanced:

1.      The infrastructure necessary for raising a military to fight a world war,

2.      to sufficiently supply and enable the U.S. and Allied survival and presence in the Pacific until a serious effort could be made.

3.      The necessity of opening a front in Europe to elimate the Nazi menace

4.      The advantage of a peripheral exercise of force to enable the military machine to build momentum, gain critical front line experience in the field, and allow the international militaries to gain experience in coordinated efforts.

George C. Marshall had a plan, a plan that was not of his own design, but rather leverage the greatest minds of the community to aggressively wrestle with the competing priorities to work out the proper balance among the things that needed to be accomplished along with the who, when, where and how of the major elements. It is highly likely that during these times he developed amazing skills in analysis and in facilitating negotiations among heavy weight superiors on every side. In the end, the plan was a good solid plan that everyone believed in, engaged in, and was conscious of their duty to achieve its objectives. Having this plan ensured that the country did not get side tracked by enticing words from allies into empirical objectives in the Balkans, and it was so sound as to ensure we did not get bullied into prematurely opening a second front in Europe before we were ready by an ally who was with justifiably hounding the U.S. because of the immense mortal losses that were being experienced. And in the end this higher level plan was far reaching into the future; it would have been gratifying to strike back immediately and heavily at those who pounded us at Pearl Harbor, but there was literally a world of work, pain, and agony that had to be endured before that gratifying final victory was undertaken in earnest. His humility, capability, vision, and commitment to that plan, which embodied the objectives of the nation as his first priority, is an example of selfless service that is more desperately needed across the country with each passing day.

MISCELLANEOUS EXHORTATIONS

1.      DEVELOP A RELIABLE OPERATIONAL BUSINESS MODEL. The time to begin developing a representative model of how the company does business is immediately if it doesn’t exist. It may start out very “clunky,” general, and inaccurate, but over time, when used as the subject for training and development by skilled leaders with its leadership and management team it will quickly develop into a reliable representation of the operation (current state and future state) upon which future plans can be based with a solid foundation.

2.      DO NOT START THE ENGINEERING WITHOUT A RELIABLE PLAN. The engineering plan must be developed with sufficient detail to implement a reliable baseline plan that ensures all activities specifically identified in a way that leads to a high confidence of completion and functional resources with enough specificity in the KSAs required that sufficient options can be developed in the hiring or subcontract pipelines to ensure the application of the necessary disciplined expertise to the effort to hold schedule.

3.      ENSURE PROCUREMENT & SUBCONTRACT EXPERTISE & PROCESSES COMMENSURABLE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROGRAM. Processes must be in place to ensure that critical technical services can be obtained and properly integrated to complete the functional design conclusively within the window (and any schedule margins) planned.

4.      COMPLETE THE FUNCTIONAL DESIGN BEFORE DETAIL PLANNING THE PRODUCTION. Functional engineering must be complete (functional requirements and system interfaces and allocations fully integrated and reconciled among all systems) by the final Critical Design Review.

5.      IMPLEMENT A RELIABLE PRODUCTION BASELINE THAT EVERYONE EXECUTES TO. Implementing a program level production baseline should be readily and reliably undertaken with very high confidence if the shipyard understands the functionally defined product and knows with certainty the process steps that must be undertaken to complete the work (manufacturing, construction-build, construction completion, and activation & test).

6.      DO NOT COMMENCE PRODUCTION UNTIL 3-6 MONTHS OF PLANNING CAN BE ESTABLISHED AND MAINTAINED THROUGHOUT THE PROGRAM. The Production Readiness Review must provide a sufficient window of complete and ready to work activities far enough in the future with sufficient resources that can ensure the planned window is maintained steadily over time until completion of the program.

CONCLUSION

It is a reliable proposition that 90-95% of decent plans can be made to work if the population of a company’s workforce will work to the plan. This proposition has two critical ingredients: 1) the integrity of the principles inherent in the plan are sound, and 2) that personnel will work to the plan. There are no guarantees and an extremely high degree of risk for any program that does not have a solid baseline plan or is engaged in continuous re-planning.