Productivity Management Insights and Lessons from Naval Ship Repair

摘要

Successfully managing a portfolio of ship repair projects across a multi-project capable shipyard is one of the most complex challenges in program management. Chronic underperformance in naval ship repair has cost the Navy billions of dollars in lost operational availability of ships and submarines. Optimizing ship repair policies and execution strategies on delivered productivity has the potential to significantly improve both schedule performance and industrial base throughput. The dynamics of public and private shipyard Navy ship repair practices that drive performance provides context for improving management decisions and shipyard policies.Several unique systemic issues drive ship repair complexity including project unique work packages, individual ship configurations and requirements, increases to work scope after project start from systems/equipment inspections and testing and frequent failure of components during system testing late in the project. Based on decades of program analysis experience, these issues make repair projects far more difficult to plan and execute than the most challenging development programs.Insights to improve performance are derived from over a decade of work analyzing public and private ship repair projects and over 5-decades of experience using program management digital twins for both new construction and repair shipyards. A program management digital twin is a dynamic simulation of how work is accomplished across a shipyard. It includes the drivers of productivity and quality and how they vary based on the conditions during planning and execution to determine actual performance. A digital twin provides a "what if..." analysis capability to test alternative strategies and policies and trace the cause-effect reasons behind outcomes. It provides the confidence necessary for management to challenge assumptions and pursue effective, often counter-intuitive actions that improve performance.Assessments and recommendations are provided in the areas of management complexity, resource allocation and phasing project priority across the portfolio to increase project productivity, identifying impacts to performance from contracting issues and policies, setting project schedules based on throughput instead of performance to original schedule and assessing overtime policies to improve performance. Each is based on leveraging aspects of project "physics" that drive productivity. Several of the insights provided appear counter-intuitive at first glance but, if properly integrated into the scheduling and resource allocation process can drive performance improvement. The overarching insight is the Navy can change the repair "system" to improve performance by managing for portfolio productivity which leads directly to increased throughput.