Original Date: 07/25/2005
Revision Date: 09/12/2006

Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems’ Comprehensive Program Plan for process improvement saves times, reduces overhead cost, and ensures that the appropriate level of planning has occurred to optimize the probability of meeting cost, schedule, performance, and quality objectives of the program. The Comprehensive Program Plan also provides valuable reports to project managers and stakeholders. Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems is currently implementing a pilot for prototype production, development, production, and field service by pre-tailoring the Comprehensive Program Plan boilerplate templates

Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems’ (NGES’) Engineering Process Organization (EPO) developed the Comprehensive Program Plan (CPP) in 2002 to standardize and improve the planning process using Microsoft Access on any standard workstation. The CPP identifies all the tasks to be input into the Integrated Master Schedule and assigns responsibilities. The CPP can also serve as a customer deliverable.

The CPP begins during the program acquisition phase when the strategy for program execution and follow-on opportunities are formulated. The program cycle begins with program planning and acquisition, followed by program initiation, program execution, and program completion. The CPP prepares a program for execution, providing a master schedule, an organizational chart, contractual information, a program overview, a system description overview, key deliverables, and key milestones. The CPP also provides a single location for planning and execution activities that include management and control, risk management, procurement and material, financial management, contact management, program planning and control, program estimating and pricing, international management, configuration management, data management, resource management, security management, quality assurance, requirements development, product development, manufacturing operations, and integrated logistics support. The CPP filters more than 5,000 documents down to approximately 200 procedures for planning and execution activities.

When program feedback stressed the need to reduce the time and effort required to create the CPP and effectively address the demands of a multi-user environment, the CPP Wizard was developed in 2002 as a database application system that can quickly and clearly identify all process and contract requirements associated with any task, phrase, or aspect of a program. The CPP Wizard can be downloaded with guidance and instructions and links to the standard processes. The CPP boilerplate lists the key work products (requirements) that programs are expected to produce during execution. NGES provides assistance and offers mentoring programs to develop CPPs through the EPO, Software EPO (SEPO), and/or Quality. All users who download the CPP Wizard are asked if help on the tool or process is desired. Individual and group training on the CPP Wizard are available and are provided regularly.

NGES’ use of the CPP ensures that the appropriate level of planning has been achieved and that the infrastructure is in place to optimize the probability of meeting cost, schedule, performance, and quality objectives for all programs. The implementation of the CPP Wizard has facilitated the tailoring of processes for multi-site or multi-sector programs through a common and structured approach to fully identify and link to the processes being applied, permitting programs to leverage total sector capability for design and manufacture through common tools and business systems.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.