Project Management Challenges in the Field of Mechanical Engineering
You are looking for a project management software for mechanical engineering and plant construction?
Then use our versatile software PLANTA project!
Plant construction and mechanical engineering projects require a high degree of accuracy, correctness, and transparency. Any error in the subsequent production costs money and can lead to millions in damages if goods are recalled. This also applies to any errors that occur during the course of the project. During the project, you should therefore always keep an eye on all important parameters, such as deadlines, capacities and tolerances. PLANTA project makes this possible and comes with further benefits.
The software offers transparent and fast project planning, which also allows for the simulation of scenarios and project management in mechanical engineering and plant construction.
PLANTA project is available in a desktop or mobile version.
You should make an appointment right away to get to know the helpful functions of the PLANTA software suite.
Core Functions of Project Management Software in Mechanical Engineering and Plant Construction
When selecting your project management software for plant construction and mechanical engineering, you should make sure that it has the functions you need. Here are the core functions that are important and that your software should definitely include:
- Implementation of the project preparation
- Project planning and scheduling (incl. outline planning of orders)
- Combination of agile and traditional project management
- Project visualization with Gantt charts
- Efficient resource and capacity management
- Creation, assignment, controlling, and management of work packages
- Make risks, evaluation criteria, and project estimates transparent
- Budget management and monitoring
- Creation of reports and documentation
- Identification of dependencies
- Simple operation
- Tools for problem and change management
- Early warning system
- Agile boards as collaboration tools for mechanical engineering teams
- Interfaces/integrations
Detailed information about the functions that PLANTA project and PLANTA portfolio offer to make your projects more effective and cost efficient:
Implementation of the project preparation
To start building systems or machines, it is important to define objectives and to set out a time line as well as responsibilities. They must then be defined for feasibility and the progress should be documented. This way, you get transparent information on where bottlenecks arise, whether targets are being realistically met by those involved, and what has already been coordinated and agreed in advance. A clear documentation of the process is crucial to the success of a machine or system.
Project planning and scheduling (incl. outline planning of orders)
In order to be able to deliver flawless plants and machines to the customer in the first place, it is recommendable to use order planning. What is to be implemented by what date, by whom, with what resources and what are the availabilities and expected costs? In order to stay on top of things, you can create date overviews for all orders and important offers across projects. A traffic light function indicates when there is a date delay or costs are overrun.
Project outline planning is also possible with PLANTA’s project management software for machine or plant construction. It offers advantages in order-based individual and small series production, as all processes are planned and controlled in the software and projects have shorter throughput times. Coarse network plans allow you to communicate realistic delivery dates while creating the offer. It also allows you to create coarse capacity planning for all departments concerned.
Combination of Agile and Traditional Project Management
Many mechanical engineering projects run in a structured mannerand require a timely completion of the individual interdependent production processes. A traditional project management software like PLANTA project allows you to map such projects and make them transparent.
To be able to respond to changes, you furthermore require a certain degree of flexibility, especially within the team. This calls for agile project management.
Our hybrid system which combines PLANTA pulse and PLANTA project , lets you manage your projects traditionally while PLANTA pulse allows you to control tasks in your project teams in an agile manner. You can outsource subprojects or individual tasks in the agile tool if you wish for more collaboration to be more flexible.
Enhanced Project Visualization with Gantt Charts
The visual representation in particular can make it easier for you to keep an eye on your project. Our software provides Gantt charts that are suitable for this purpose. The diagram shows the the course of the project over time in a horizontal bar chart and furthermore includes all important project details. Milestones can be recorded in it, such as the completion of the testing phase. Gantt charts furthermore help teams to get an overview of the distributed tasks, responsibilities, and temporal goals — from lead time scheduling through to the entire order processing. The software allows to graphically map the entire order structure.
Efficient Resource and Capacity Management
Resources are important resourcesin project management and are often limited (so-called bottleneck resources). This is particularly evident among employees with a high level of expertise, such as highly qualified engineers. If there is already a major project involving the employees in question, it may occur that required resources are not available and external personnel have to be found. Our resource planning software for mechanical engineering allows you to manage resources and capacities quickly and clearly across departments. PLANTA project also allows for the outline capacity planning across all concerned departments with PLANTA project.
Creation, Assignment, Controlling, and Management of Work Packages
In order for all persons involved in the project to be able to plan efficiently, it is important that tasks be defined, scheduled, and assigned to someone. This includes, e.g., the ordering of required raw materials or tools. If the task is not completed on time, a reminder should be set so that no standstill or delay occurs during the project.
With PLANTA pulse we also offer you a Kanban software for machine construction projects. It supports your teams in balancing tasks and capacities and helps you to avoid staff shortages and overloads.
Transparency for Risks, Evaluation Criteria, and Project Estimates
Project management programs show the current status in the project. This means that, among other things, the current progress of the project and initial results can be called up and a forecast can be made based on the actual project data. This makes your mechanical engineering project planning even more accurate, as data from the field can be used for simulation and estimates based on other construction projects with similar machines, for example, can be optimized and corrected.
Budget Management and Monitoring
The deployment of high quality machines or plants usually requires a well thought-out investment. For example, it is necessary to find the best price/performance ratio with the customer’s existing budget. In order for the actual costs to be in accordance with the calculation and to enable monitoring during the course of the project, it is recommended to create a budget plan.
This can be used to check whether the planned costs are in line with the budget for the respective order. The overview can also be used to discuss where there is need for saving. During the course of the project, our software for mechanical engineering projects monitors that the budget is adhered to. If costs change significantly in the course of the project, the early warning system sounds the alarm.
Calculations can also be made in more depth. Be it for individual machines or according to function groups, such as for the electrical system. Scheduling can also be carried out, which includes an estimate of the resources required to calculate the target costs. The costs of ordered goods can be imported from the purchasing system.
The entered data from the current project, such as personnel hours, material costs, and external services, enable the creation of a constantly updated target/actual comparison and a continuous order calculation.
Creation of Reports and Documentation
Stakeholders like investors, company owners, and other persons expect continuous reporting on the construction of plants and machines. This means that order-related and cross-order information and evaluations can be created in our system at the touch of a button. This ensures that project targets and milestones are met and that the machine is already included in the production plan.
The documentation of project progress is also indispensable. Project-relevant information is particularly useful when a customer audit is due or complaints are being processed. PLANTA project allows you to gather all data relevant for the project at one single place.
Identification of Dependencies
If dates are postponed within a project for machine and plant construction, this has an impact on all subsequent tasks. In a worst case scenario, the construction may even have to be stopped. If the project is continued at a later date, the required resources, such as a specialized civil engineer, may no longer be available. Identification of dependencies is therefore considered a key function of our software suite.
Simple Handling
Only a simple handling of the project management software used makes sure that projects in plant construction and mechanical engineering can be controlled successfully. If the menu navigation is too complicated, individual tasks can easily be overlooked. There is also an increased risk of errors, which can have a negative impact on the success of the project. With a multi-project management software by PLANTA, actual data can directly be created and reported in the tool. This way, all persons involved in the project collaborate based on common and current data in real time.
Tools for Defect and Change Management
Another important project management feature for mechanical engineering and plant construction is organized defect and change management. If defects are identified during the testing phase or other phases of the project, changes must be made as quickly as possible. If they are not recognized, detected and eliminated immediately, follow-up costs can arise in production, which the manufacturer of the system may have to bear in full. A well-functioning reporting chain is therefore essential.
Early Warning System
Costs getting out of hand jeopardize the project objective. If a resource is absent, an early warning system automatically issues a message. This means that everyone involved in the project realizes that they have to react in order to keep the plant and mechanical engineering on schedule and within budget.
Collaboration Tool for Mechanical Engineering Teams
To construct high quality plants or machines, all persons involved in the project should have the same information. If outdated tolerance data is available, this can lead to errors or delays, as a test series may have to be carried out again. This way, double data management can be avoided. At the same time, the software should provide tools for collaboration. Because transparency and communication in the team are important factors for success.
PLANTA’s software for mechanical engineering projects offers sufficient collaboration tools that make working in distributed teams much easier.
Interfaces/Integrations
To allow you to use existing data, our project management software for mechanical engineering or plant construction has interfaces to different systems including ERP systems. This avoids double data management and renewed entry, so that all persons involved in the project work with the same up-to-date data, mistakes due to outdated data can be avoided and thus time can be saved.
Why Traditional Project Management Is Not Always Sufficient in Mechanical Engineering
Traditional project management is not always sufficient for mechanical engineering projects, as some projects require different approaches. In traditional project management, the final status is described and planned at the start of the project. All quality-relevant parameters, costs, the benefits of the machine and the system as well as costs, resource planning and scheduling are defined and form the basis of the project.
This approach is very static and not suitable for all mechanical engineering projects or plant projects. Some projects in mechanical and plant engineering require flexibility in the selection of project management methods, project types and working methods, as the projects and project objectives are usually very different. A hybrid project management solution is therefore suitable for these projects or sub-projects.
Our agile project management software for mechanical engineering combines the advantages of the functions of the PLANTA pulse and PLANTA project solution to enable you to respond to these special requirements in the best possible way. In addition to classic project management functions such as milestone planning, your team also has access to agile team collaboration via Kanban boards and Scrum.
How the PLANTA PM Software Optimizes Project Management in Mechanical Engineering
Our PLANTA project management software suite revolutionizes the market since PLANTA project allows you to map your entire order processing in one single software. From project preparation with technical clarification and preliminary costing through to test runs, commissioning, and customer acceptance. All in software that is easy to use. You can also use it for coarse order planning, in which all processes are displayed. This allows you to process individual and small series projects quickly and cost-effectively, reduce throughput times and achieve a high level of adherence to deadlines.
In order to optimally utilize and efficiently deploy all project participants, PLANTA’s mechanical engineering project management software enables departmental scheduling and capacity utilization planning, which also includes hierarchical resource planning. This way, your departments do not only keep project-related work and priorities under control, but can also make decisions and prioritize across the board. This also enables your design, production, and assembly departments to be utilized to a higher and more even degree, so that there are no peaks that create overload or underload for the departments. Even in the case of the absence of resources you can react quickly.
As the software is available as a desktop and mobile version, data can be entered in real time at any location, such as directly during the test run, and made available to everyone. Double data management is avoided and collaboration is facilitated by the existence of up-to-date data. As you can react more quickly, you can even gain market advantages in the long term. It also gives each of your stakeholders certainty about the quality and timeliness of the data, which also allows for a faster response and eliminates unnecessary stress and wrong decisions based on outdated data.
If data in the project deviates from the specifications, an early warning system reacts, indicating deviations in the traffic light system and signaling to project participants during the construction of machines and systems where the quickest response is required. A simulation function can calculate expenses at the touch of a button and shows where dates would be postponed.
Furthermore, the reporting system of the PLANTA software is very informative, so that order managers in sales, technical staff, division managers, management and also customers have meaningful documents. This saves time, as the number of queries to the project manager, for example, is reduced and errors due to incorrect interpretation of the data are minimized.
The PLANTA software portfolio also comprises different Scrum tools for mechanical engineering which enable sprint planning. The project progress is tracked in PLANTA project. Data can thus be used to continuously improve the project process, planning and implementation, which gives companies in mechanical and plant engineering great competitive advantages, as costs are reduced, processes are optimized, and less time is required.
The PLANTA project management software plant construction and mechanical engineering offers these and other helpful functions which you require from architecture to implementation up to the control of the project success. All in one tool.
Advantages of PLANTA project for Mechanical Engineering and Plant Construction
Projects in mechanical engineering and plant construction are complex and demand a high degree of precision. This is exactly where PLANTA project comes in, offering the following advantages:
You can map everything from project preparation with technical clarification and preliminary costing through to test runs in one software package.
Your entire outline planning can be mapped here.
Individual and small series projects can be processed quickly and cost-effectively.
You create your entire schedule and capacity utilization planning, including hierarchical resource planning with PLANTA project.
In the event of resource failures, you can react quickly and find alternatives.
Your teams work together in real time through mobile and desktop versions and collaboration tools.
Early warning systems with a simulation function keep you constantly informed of any deviations and their consequences.
Case studies and successes in project management plant construction and mechanical engineering by PLANTA
Here are some examples of how companies have optimized their project planning with the PLANTA software suite:
Uhde High Pressure Technologies (UHPT) was able to optimize its scheduling and resource planning by using our software for mechanical engineering projects. UHPT is a high-tech company of thyssenkrupp, which is one of the world’s leading suppliers in plant engineering. The company has around 170 projects running in parallel, with an average project duration of one to two years per project. Before the software was introduced, delivery deadlines could often not be met and it was difficult to plan resources due to an uneven project landscape.
Through the introduction, project planning processes have been standardized. Planning was previously mostly done in Excel and MS Project. Thanks to our PLANTA software, the company now has increased planning security/precision, can identify problems/delays in the order processing in good time, and the manual effort in order monitoring has reduced significantly. Read in depth how the implementation of the PLANTA project management software benefited Uhde High Pressure Technologies. To read the practice report, click here.
The main departments of the BMW Group “Test entire vehicle“ and “Crash” meanwhile use PLANTA project for all testing processes. This begins with cold and heat testing of the vehicle or individual components and extends to long-term testing to ensure component strength and the long-term reliability of systems and drives. This allows for a standardized tool to be deployed and used across the respective areas. This makes it easier to process data further and avoid sources of error during data transfer and interpretation. Main departments can thus plan, control, and invoice all vehicle development projects in one tool. Resource planning was also optimized and complete documentation could be ensured.
These are only two of many examples of how project work in companies can be improved using the PLANTA software suite.
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