Original Date: 05/08/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

McDonnell Douglas Aerospace (MDA)-St. Louis developed a Process Based Management (PBM) approach to cost and schedule control systems and merged two division manuals on cost/schedule control system criteria into one Process Management Guide. It was one of the first process-based guides in industry and was developed in less than a year by a multidisciplinary team, incorporating benchmarking results and customer inputs.

A performance management team was established with representatives from every business unit to review and approve all system description changes, and communicate the cost and cost process changes. This team, which was established as the owner of the system, worked to support the deployment of the system across the company by identifying process sponsors and owners, and ensuring that the cost and schedule processes were consistent with the new Process Management Guide. The performance management team also established metrics and goals for the new process, and worked to involve the customer representatives as active participants.

The Process Management Guide has been successfully applied in the F/A-18 E/F program. It has documented a consistent set of high-level guidelines for the cost and schedule processes, has documented the processes for improvements in support of company affordablility initiatives, and has improved the involvement of the customer and employees in the cost and schedule process.

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