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Crystal Ball Allows Hewlett-Packard To
Bring Printers To Market On Time
CUSTOMER OF THE MONTH (MAY, 1998)
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Jeff Brown is a Project Manager in the R&D Lab of Hewlett-Packard's
Work Group Color Laserjet Division. One of Jeff's main responsibilities
is estimating the duration of production projects from conception
to manufacturing release. An accurate production schedule provides
HP the ability to effectively bring products to market on time.
In the past, Jeff has used COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) to
aid in establishing production schedules. This method alone, however,
did not address the particular areas of variability that were causing
delays in production. One of the difficult areas to accommodate
in the planning process is the relative efficiency level of individual
engineers since each one works at a different pace in various areas
of expertise. Based on historical data regarding output, the engineers
are grouped into "feature teams" and are responsible for
the development of specific printer features. The complexity of
the particular printer features is another important variable because
some features require more engineers and production time to develop.
Also, Jeff must consider the levels of integration between the various
"feature teams" which indicates how many other teams any
particular team will have to work with in order to accomplish their
tasks.
Using Crystal Ball to help develop his most current production
schedule, Jeff performed over 10,000 Monte-Carlo simulations using
just under 100 control variables to help identify those areas which
posed potential risks to the production timetable. The results from
these simulations gave Jeff the information necessary to most effectively
allocate production resources.
When using the COCOMO method alone, the production schedules Jeff
produced were often significantly incorrect, sometimes varying as
much as 9 months. After employing Crystal Ball, however, Jeff was
pleased to discover that the difference between the scheduled completion
date and the actual completion date had been reduced to 5 weeks.
With this large of a difference between the two production schedules,
it is easy to see why Jeff views Crystal Ball as being an integral
tool in helping to bring HP's Colorjet Printers to market on time.
ADDENDUM - January 5, 1999 - Response from Jeff Brown
"I just completed another cycle of the software estimation model
described in your Hewlett-Packard (2) application story, and I now
have 30 managers asking all kinds of questions about things we can
model, ideas we can try, and potential improvements we can make.
They were very impressed by how quickly and easily I could change
some of my control variables and begin a new simulation; the turnaround
time on what-if questions was only a couple minutes. They could
watch the new simulation run on our overhead screen, even as I
described how the modeling techniques worked.
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