CAD Services: How We Organize a Project

I thought it might be worthwhile to provide a pictorial example of the team that we deploy on a typical medium-sized CAD project.  The diagram illustrates the structure of the team that is currently working on one of our active projects.  Please spend a few moments looking at it, after which I will explain what is not obvious.

The best way to explain aspects of the team is in terms of its hierarchical layers. So here goes.

First some points of overview:

• The lower down in the diagram a team member is, the more quality inspection he does
• Above the drafter level, members are involved in administrative tasks such as monitoring timely completion and answering drafters’ technical questions

I will now describe the primary functions of each level, starting with the drafters’ level.

One might say that the drafters’ level is the most important.  It is primarily responsible for quality.  That is because, as concerns quality, it is not our primary intention to create a quality control system that catches all defects.  It is our intention not to introduce defects to start with. 

Although we continuously train our drafters to create drawings with zero errors, we nevertheless check their work 100%.  And this checking is done by the Checkers.

The two Project Leaders:

• Train the drafters in the skills required for the particular customer’s domain
• Farm out work to the drafters as and when it is received from our customers and inform the drafters how long they should take to finish each drawing
• Inspect work at a 30% sampling level
• Package the drawings and send them to the customer

That QC Manager samples the drawing at a 10% rate, and monitors correct packaging and timely dispatch of the drawings.

The Architect provides answers to architecture-related questions that any other members of the team may have.  He also samples the work at a 10% rate.

The Senior Manager has overall responsibility for the project.  For this particular project, all communication with the customer is done in his name.  He communicates regularly with the customer on the status of the work and emails or holds video conferences with the customer to clarify issues which cannot be clarified at TMG. He also samples the work at a 1% rate.

Considerable redundancy is deliberately built into the team structure in anticipation of team members taking days off for personal reasons.

The net result is that the work proceeds in a predictable, orderly fashion, deliveries are made on time and the defect rate is as close to zero as possible.

We commit to you that if you send us a project , we will give it the same amount of care that we give this one!

Have a nice day,