Earned Value in a Project Manufacturing Environment - A Case Study Assessing the Effectiveness of EVM

Abstract

Project manufacturing is an operation designed to provide unique yet similar products, where every product is the result of a project (Yang 2012). The primary purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of traditional project management techniques, specifically Earned Value Management (EVM), in a manufacturing environment. This assessment was done by utilizing the case study method on 31 different projects at a large aerospace manufacturing firm. The analysis suggests that EVM may not be a useful tool in a project manufacturing environment. Furthermore, the findings indicate there is a gap between what the project team is baselining in terms of effort and what is actually getting executed to on the manufacturing floor by the manufacturing team. The extremely conservative approach to baselining by project team members results in EVM indicators that may not truly reflect the true health of the project on the manufacturing floor.