Grosvenor Project Quality Management - Case Study Example

Project Quality Management Name Institution Lecturer Course Date Grosvenor Project http://www.angloamerican.com.au/our-operations/projects/grosvenor-project.aspx Executive Summary The term quality defines diverse set of aspects that require resources, tools and techniques to be created. The project has to incorporate quality tools and information which is disseminated in the project process to manage the products. Project quality management encompasses a range of evolving needs as most projects are incorporating advance technologies as well as digital technologies to make the products deliver the best after project completion. The key purpose of quality management is to deliver and provide quality planning, control and assurance. The quality must design the services, networks and applications and teams to carry out quality checks at different stages of project (Ireland 1991). Quality can make the project activities better and faster. It creates an organization with information to use, capacity building, and resource allocation, manage system and ensure products delivery. The Grosvenor project quality management will take care of quality needs for the organization, project teams, customers and community at large. Quality will be ensures through included services to product both the electronic and general equipment. The project performance will be enhanced by ensuring that significant benefits, productivity improvement and better operations are achieved. The time-frame of the project will ensure that quality plans are central. The paper deliberates on the quality management, its significance, assurance and control in a comprehensive manner to ensure delivery of highest products for Grosvenor project. The conclusion has summed-up the discussion followed while recommendations has identified adequate funds, engineers training, a set project strategy at the beginning and contingencies plans for stages as necessary for delivery of quality. Introduction and project background According to Stebbing (1994), quality in a project environment is very important and it revolves around the totality of characteristics of a certain organization to bear and satisfy the stated and implied project needs. Within the project, there is a need to identify the project products and services which make them fit for the purpose and satisfy the stated product or service needs. Implied needs should not be a focus for the project as there is always uncertainty or less use of such needs. The quality that the customers require has to be achieved. The project management activities must therefore implement a project quality plan (Walker & Keniger 2002). This discussion analysis the significance of quality management in relation to the nature of a project, quality planning, assurance and quality control as critical parts of a project (Ward 1999). For the purpose of this discussion, Grosvenor project in Moranbah, Central Queensland will critically be analyzed in its scope of quality management. The long wall mine produces 5 million tons of coal per annum. It has been operated by Anglo American from 1998. Moranbah South project is planned to be developed by 2020 by use of leading technology using standard longwall, coal handling and preparation plant design model (Anglo American). Project Quality Context Need for Quality Management There is a greater need for quality management for Grosvenor project to deliver superior end products as well as desired services after its completion. All site personnel who are directly involved in the production of the coal have to be familiar with requirements. The technology design model implemented for this project incorporates a standard longwall, coal handling and preparation plant. Quality in this case will be measured by performance which is benchmarked at an output of 5 million tons of metallurgical coal. Reliability feature will be determined by how the technology will be engineered, emphasizing on dependability in the technology lifecycle management. The technology must perform under its stated conditions for the period specified. Quality management for the project has to aim at three issues which are particular to coal mining and handling from the pit to the plant. First, the technology requires a focus on mining activities and stockpile management. Coal quality has been affected from initial mining activities and the way the plant handles the stockpile. Second, the direction of the project will emphasize on minimizing dilution by putting in place the necessary measures to reduce high clay content which cause handling problems. Thirdly, the technology has to ensure that fines generation is minimized. To monitor coal quality, the project highly requires a weekly, monthly and annual mine plans. The plan will allow frequent communication on changes and documentation of the necessary quality aspects of coal. The technology implemented is very effective for quality coal production as it will ensure quality analysis depending on geological structures underground and exploration techniques. According to Oakland & Sohal (1996), quality management will reduce the probability and frequency of failure of the end product. The whole design will take into account the maintainability aspects as quality management defines them in the process of implementation. Through the use of different and elaborate system approach, quality management will ensure that there are proper studies for the technology (Baker 1997). As argues in Baker (1997), the system can be laid down with requirements specification, design of hardware and software, functional failure analysis, analyzed manufacturing, testing, operations and maintenance. By understanding of basic failure mechanisms, the experience, good knowledge and broad engineering skills has to be applied to ensure that the technology takes into account the aspects of stress, thermal, chemical, electrical and fatigue in the system. An approach that is preceded by failure analysis ensures that quality factors are incorporated at specific phase and before completion of a product (Bryde 1997). Stockpile management plan can prevent degradation over time. Wet weather can lead to inundation and during rainfall seasons and the construction has to be tight enough to reduce potential loss of coal. The faults and failures are not only analyzed at the initiation but along the process and after a product are completed (Williams 1994). This in turn provides the basis to make the corrective progress. Quality management ensures that such changes are incorporated in the system to deliver superior products. Quality management ensures that the technology/system has met and exceeds the customer satisfaction (Dawson 1996). Quality management ensures that the organization reduces waste as the owners of the products works closely with the suppliers to ensure that quality is part of every product (Baker 1997). The close coordination between the owners of the facility and teamwork of employees will facilitate the specifications of the system outputs (Dawson 1996). Anglo American partners with suppliers of safe, reliable mining system. Joy Global, a leading equipment supplier has some of advanced technology with incorporated remote access capabilities. Considering such world class level suppliers, Grosvenor project will ensure reduced waste. Quality management ensures that there is increased productivity and revenue. Anglo American can therefore deliver a mining technology as per their models of promotion and promises made to various customers. Significance of Quality management According to Bryde (1997), quality management is customer-based as it focuses on the needs of the organization in effective delivery to the customers. Quality management determines the cost-effectiveness of any system. The design model, considering that this is a large scale project, has to reduce wastage by nearing that things are done right in the first time. Defects can be reduced if a good plan, control and assurance exist as a framework for quality management. Meredith & Mantel Jr 2011 points out that, quality management responds to the standards set by the organization by guaranteeing fit for use products and operations. The mining system through the use of an advanced technology and remote access capability will ensure safe, reliable design. System efficiencies, safety and benchmarked performance are specific aspects considered by quality management. Completion of Grosvenor project will see a tripling metallurgical coal production by 2020. Having such projections, there is high customer expectation. The company will thrive through the supply to its existing and new customers. The technology has to meet the expectations and fulfill the needs. Meredith & Mantel Jr, (2011) further argues that, quality management is established for various industrial activities as it allows the teams to measure and test the features of the products in relation to expected quality. The scope of quality for Grosvenor project have to be broken down to make it detailed. There is need for field service quality, industrial consideration quality, process review or development, products quality, quality assurance, audit and control. The organization has to put the customers at the forefront and ensure critical properties to meet the requirements and needs. The higher standards of security are expected for the workers, Grosvenor operators and Anglo American has to deliver as to its promises to its customers. It also entails that contingencies plans exist if a need arise. As Ireland (1991) discusses, quality management will ensure that the features of Grosvenor project are not affected by system downturn. Quality management will therefore help to identify the equipment and personnel to focus on the safety, cost and failure models. The teams in the project will have to ensure that they pay high attention to the details and therefore become proactive approach to failure management (McDowell 2001). Conclusively, quality management will ensure items fit for purpose, maintenance requirement over time, resistance to failure, performance of required function and durability. Quality Planning and Assurance Improvement to a system can only be ensured when quality is defined and measured. Quality is a multidimensional concept that covers a wide scope of the project. Having considered quality as a key aspect of nay project, it is therefore important not to treat quality as a last step which occurs before the delivery or after assemblage or development of a system. Quality can as well be estimated like schedule and effort needed in the project (Knutson 1999). The Grosvenor project has to conform to the requirements and quality planning will determine the defects rate in number and per function points. In case one block has structural concerns in terms of excessive splitting, faults and melon holes, then the supervisor and superintendent will apply the mechanism to solve the quality issues. The plan affects the reliability rate in terms of number of failure in operations and mean time of failure. Grosvenor project quality plan is needed considering that error are obvious as the project involves various teams for a very long duration of time. The plan will therefore set to understand the defect injection as well as removal cycle. The plan defines the system quality by bringing into light the various quality characteristics. As Richardson (1994) points out, the project manager can then ensure that the final product has high quality. High quality removes the defects as it works as a defect removal in each transformational stage. Knutson (1999) observes that, quality planning is important aspect of quality prediction as defects and defects level is well estimated. The plan ensures that there is a process to detect defects at various stages. Consequently, it is possible to set the performance expectation through quality control processes. The testing and reviews are guided by control limits. The target number of defects has to match the actual in a properly executed removal process. The plan sets the quality goal, predict the defect levels and plan for suitable enhancements to quality process. A plan is informed by past data of similar projects and that from process capability baseline. The project phases must ensure that there is long term decision for mining the block. The block has to be a part of weekly or monthly plan presented to Grosvenor. The coal mining supervisor needs to have a copy of the physical plan while the coal mining superintendent need a stratigraphic plan for block with details of coal as well as interburden thicknesses. The efficiency by which defects are removed is set out in the process and the goal. The plan estimates the number of defects through a defect injection rate for estimated size of the project. A project manager is guided by the available recommendations at organizational level as well as those from project’s defect data analysis (Richardson 1994). The manager can then identify a team and assign towards defect prevention within the various phases of the project. The proposed teams for a particular defect will be assigned the role according to their capacity, knowledge and skills that are I interdependent with other defects. The teams will be engaged in kick-off meetings to identify some of the existing and solutions to seek. The teams in the Grosvenor can therefore plan for defect prevention by setting the defect prevention goals. Quality management plan not only set the goals to prevent defects in a project but also arrange for the training of defect project team on defect prevention as well as causal analysis if need be. As McDowell (2001) points out, the team defines the frequency of defect occurrence which is critical for them to be proactive in the project response to quality. The quality plan is therefore important as it brings together the various tools which separately or together promote the project’s quality. Evans & Lindsay (1993) identifies control charts as one of the tools that are prepared to determine the stability and predictable performance. The charts gather data which show when a project will be subject to a variation. The plan will then set the lower and upper control limits. The second tool involves the cost-benefit analysis where the cost-benefit trade off are considered. The benefit can be less re-work, increased owners satisfaction and higher productivity. The third tool is benchmarking where actual and planned activities are compared to generate improvement, provide a basis for measuring performance. Fourth, designed experiment helps to identify the variables in the process and variables impact to product quality. Other tools applied include the cost of quality, flowcharting, affinity diagrams and brainstorming. Engineering activities are needed for quality assurance. The reason for assurance is to fulfill the product requirements. Quality assurance involves the quality of production system, facilities, equipment and materials systems. In every phase of Grosvenor project, the project manager will need to employ a systematic measurement, do comparison with the standard, monitor processes and offer feedback to bridge the loops as discussed in Richardson (1994). The Anglo American is the system users and must determine the suitable quality. Regular evaluations will be necessary to offer confidence that relevant quality standard will be met. Grosvenor project has identified its key construction statistics involving the cubic meters of earthmoving, fill, steel and reinforced concrete. The assurance for this project will depend on Anglo American project management team which involves internal quality insurance. The other parties involved in project work such as Joy Global manufacturers can provide the external quality assurance. Quality Control Quality control monitors specific project results in order to determine whether they comply with the relevant quality standards as well as identifying the ways to eliminate their causes which may lead to unsatisfactory results. Quality control has to be performed throughout this project for products results, cost and schedule performance. Anglo American can perform the quality control through setting a Quality Control Department or an organizational unit. As Schuyler (1996) argues, there are statistical quality control including sampling and probability methods help in evaluating quality control outputs. Control focuses on prevention to keep errors out in the process. They can come up with special causes or unusual events and normal process variation. The range specified by control promotes tolerance and control limits. There are typical constraints such as the scope, budget and time of the project. Control ensures that the primary challenge is worked on to achieve various project goals. When the secondary challenges are controlled the management optimizes the integration and allocation of inputs to meet the predetermined objectives (Evans & Lindsay 1993). The project management team has to prevent variation of the capabilities of ZigBee which is a high sensing technology. All the teams involved and particularly the Joy Global must ensure that the time limits for combining the system will not fail the project. The cost of such products can vary with time and depending on different economic conditions or demand of such products. Extended time may fail completion of the project on time and affect various facets of the project. Inspection will highly be a part of the project where the deliverables that are completed has to meet the necessary specifications in terms of time and cost of installation. The outputs of project control promote the quality improvement. A deliverable such as the sensing technology can be improved if the time set for its installation is kept in control allowing more time to visualize how it can combine other dimensions of performance. There are thus various tools and techniques that are needed to be part of it such as inspection, control charts, flowcharts, trend analysis and statistical sampling (Walker & Keniger 2002). Coal quality engineer need to perform regular pit inspections for frequent cleanup. Stockpile has to be separated as well as remove water, mud and materials on exposed coal. To avoid material fall on coal surface, a bund has to be built against low wall. Where hard coal conditions exist on coal floor, such seam should not be broken. The engineer must ensure that track dozers do not move on coal floor and roof to prevent breakage and contamination. The cleaning materials have to be redirected to ensure that they are pushed away from the face of coal. As the tools are applied in the process of project implementation, it will promote the acceptance decisions and various groups will approve the deliverables as incorporating the key features that are needed for the functions of the mine (Stebbing 1994). The project manager through project control promotes rework where a deliverable that does not reach the quality is revised. Process can be adjusted along the way if there is an activity that has been omitted on the flowchart. The activities that are set in consequent manners have to be build within the pre-defined flow so that every new deliverable can be built on its predecessor. There is wide-range of activities that the Grosvenor project is involved with and the project manager will need to us statistical sampling tools to choose a population of groups for particular inspection (Chapman 1998). The project manager can select some engineers from the list of the engineers working on the project for every activity. The steel, sensing technology, coal handling facilities as well as preparation facilities will need different group of engineers who can do comparison with each other over the delivery. It is highly expected that the scope of the project will involve separate activities with separate teams. Construction teams will hold together various activities of quality control and assume a single quality control at the set stages of the project. Ireland (1991) argues that, every team can prepare a flowchart for quality control which help to analyze the manner and pattern in which problems occur. The teams will also use mathematical techniques for forecasting the future outcomes based on skills, knowledge and historical results. Trend analysis will then be used to monitor the technical performance. The errors and defects identified and those that remain uncorrected can be analyzed. The trend ensures that schedule and cost performance align the activities as to the period of completion and their significance variances. There are issues to be considered such as parting thickness that occur across deposit. In case parting thickness exceeds 100mm, the personnel need to advice the supervisor for necessary action to be taken. In case a deliverable will not deliver to its expectation, actions can be taken to bring the nonconforming and defective items into compliance to its specifications and requirements. However, it is highly recommendable to see the loops of the project to avoid rework. Rework, especially those unanticipated can frequently cause project overruns in application areas. Some of the geological structures such as faults and dykes can affect the coal quality due to oxidation effects. Floor materials need to be concentrated at such points to ensure quality coal. The project manger should therefore make reasonable efforts for minimizing rework. Quality control will allow process adjustments to immediately correct or take a preventive action for quality control measurements (Westney 2001). Integrated change control promotes process adjustment. Quality control will focus on deliverables in order to verify that they have the acceptable quality. In Grosvenor project, project control will highly apply in incorporating an advanced technology, remote access capability and longwall, handling and preparation facilities. The quality has to be identified in the design, implementation and review stages. Conclusion Quality in a project is very vital to the usefulness of deliverables and the project at a large. Quality can affect the way a project will be used and a project manager can accept or reject quality management. Accepting quality management, assurance, and control can improve the project performance and therefore all the aspect of quality need to be stressed. Poor or inadequate personnel and communication process can highly lead to poor facilities and technology. Project environment relates to quite an extent and skills, knowledge and project manager’s experience can be used in project quality control. Grosvenor project has various factors that can lead to poor product delivery and quality. However, the study has investigated some of the main aspects of quality aspects that lead to high performing deliverables. Literature that was extensively reviewed has shown that the project manager and selected engineers teams have to ensure a high level commitment through project quality management. Quality strategy is needed as well as qualified staff to manage its aspects at different phases of the project. Considering the project period of time which is relatively long, quality can be compromised due to lack of comprehensive and adequate tools and techniques for quality control and management. Recommendations Anglo American should provide the adequate funds needed to work out the appropriate quality planning, control and assurance. Quality is not done at the end of every product delivery nor at the end of the whole project. The project needs to have a comprehensive project control strategy at the beginning before it is initiated (Evans & Lindsay 1993). Project manager must ensure that the managers or engineers have the required or adequate training to use in project quality management. Skilled engineers draw a lot of skills, knowledge and experience and use it. Through the knowledge drawn from various projects and forecasting capabilities, they can control variations. In case the skills are inadequate, it is recommended to seek external consultancy to avoid the delivery of poor deliverable or end product (Lankford & Parsa 1999). Anglo American as stakeholder and owner of the project must put a quality management strategy in place. The flowchart breaks-down the activities to be done in project process, the time to do them and the extent of activity for specific products. The project progress is fixed against the quality strategy to ensure reliable products (Stebbing 1994). A contingency project quality management strategy is needed to act as a standby and ensure continuity of activities in case the first one fails. 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