The Challenge

A European defence group appointed Innovation to undertake an audit of their entire shipbuilding programme in order to ascertain why delivery deadlines were being consistently missed by up to 6 months.

The Investigation

After a one-month review, the team via an intensive 1-month study of their approach, were able to identify three key inter-relating causes:

1. The lack of an overall top-down management approach prevented management from taking a strategic view of work and resource scheduling.
2. There was a failure to fully recognise the impacts of a switch from the traditional pre-launch / post-launch method of planning and the newer method of modular building and fitting out methods. This led to delayed milestones, such as sea trials.
3. The production process was compartmentalised and therefore the communication between the silo’s was poor. For example, these trials did not need all the galleys and cabins to be fully completed.

Our response

We created a multi-level planning approach which gave accurate visibility of current production status. This enabled prioritised completion of key deliverables.

We recommended the appointment of project managers who were responsible for the complete delivery of each ship.

We helped the client re-prioritise the delivery of work, reducing the complexity of the critical path and enabling dependencies to be reduced.

The outcome

Subsequently, working with all levels of management and departments, we were able to introduce a new organisational & management structure, together with revised and structured life-cycles, plans and working methods. This radically and rapidly resolved the issue of delivery delays and simultaneously improved cash-flow via on-time milestone compliance.