A Custom Project Management Roadmap for the New Normal in Manufacturing and Distribution

Scaling up is hard without a project engine in place. Despite funding and ambition, many manufacturing and distribution leaders hit hurdles when they’re trying to transform strategy into reality. Gaps in expertise, inadequate systems or unclear roles could put the brakes on even your most well-intended growth plans.

Make no mistake, all growth initiatives are projects.

With the right project coordination model in place, you can create momentum and turn today’s objectives into tomorrow’s achievements. You can build structures and standards that are tailored to accelerate the initiatives that matter most while honoring your culture and evolving team.

This guide — the first in our project management series — explores how to pave the way for scalability by replacing ad hoc efforts with intentional project performance.

The Biggest Signs You Might Have a Project Management Problem

Do you have a project management problem? How can you tell? Let’s first explore common challenges that indicate a bigger project management issue might be happening.

Here are some signs that your manufacturing company needs better systems and structures to manage projects:

• Your teams seem to lack the right skills and staffing to successfully execute projects. You have key talent gaps in project management that cause delays and quality issues.
• Customers and leadership are frustrated with the outcomes of recent projects. Deadlines are missed, scopes creep and budgets are overrun.
• Vendors and partners are driving your projects more than your own teams. You feel like don’t have enough visibility or control.
• Accountability is unclear. You don’t have the right insights to understand who is responsible for different aspects of project performance.
• Cross-functional alignment is lacking. Silos mean execution is suffering, because your teams lack clarity on goals and decision-making.

Perhaps your project managers struggle because they have other competing priorities, too. Relying on functional managers to lead projects might be causing some of these problems.

If these challenges sound familiar, you’re losing time, money and competitive advantage. Without better project management, this lack of accountability and coordination will continue holding you back.

The good news is there are proven solutions available. Keep reading to get options that can get your projects and teams aligned for success.

How Large-Scale Transformation Projects Expose Project Management Weaknesses — and What to Do About It

As manufacturing and distribution companies pursue growth objectives and set the stage for scaling, they often embark on large, transformational projects that inevitably highlight challenges to seamless delivery. This can include problems with expertise, capacity and systems. While project management issues can impact initiatives of any size, manufacturers tend to see the effects amplified during these complex, far-reaching undertakings.

At Syte, we often see this in the context of ERP implementation projects. ERP is often the first project of this size, complexity and magnitude that an organization has ever taken on. Up to this point, manufacturing companies may have completed other large capital projects, but those tend to be fairly isolated to a single department. In contrast, ERP implementations have a widespread, cross-functional impact that exacerbates project management issues.

This is exactly why we encourage manufacturing and distribution leaders to proactively assess project management maturity early in the ERP planning process. The complex nature of ERP implementations means your teams are often stretched thin during deployment. But the project strain doesn’t end after you go live. You can face even more hurdles in the critical 3-6 month period following deployment.

Here are some common struggles we see after an ERP implementation — but these equally apply to almost any transformational change project:

• Resource constraints to tackle phase two items: The talent that guided your ERP deployment gets pulled back into daily operations. Few can dedicate time to optimization for you.
• Ongoing triage and firefighting: Daily disruptions make it hard for you to step back and optimize new ERP features. Your teams get stuck in reactive mode.
• Knowledge gaps around the new ERP within your ranks: Shortcuts were taken during end-user trainingduring the go-live crunch. Your existing teams have limited ability to leverage new capabilities.
• Lack of clarity around your post-go-live priorities: With competing demands, what should your teams focus on first? Lack of planning creates confusion.
• Mission creep with additional requests: New questions and potential projects flood in from your business teams. But without governance, your teams struggle to balance ERP stabilization with new demands.

By putting the right project management structures in place during and after a large project like ERP implementation, you can avoid these pitfalls. A dedicated team can drive ongoing adoption beyond the go-live for your organization, and ensure that ROI targets for the large ERP investment can be met sooner rather than later.

Project Management Roles: Selecting Your Cast With Care

As you’re creating the project management structure, you also need to think about project management roles. You may face problems if you’re asking people to take on project leadership roles they are not equipped for.

By trying to turn subject matter experts or operations leads into project managers without the proper capabilities or capacity, you set them up for frustration and failure. It can also end up costing your company a lot more and delay getting strategic initiatives over the finish line.

By developing intentional project management structures and capacity, you ensure roles match the capabilities needed to drive success. This lifts the burden away from individual contributors who are in over their heads, while also resolving systemic issues.

What Is a PMO, and How Can It Help?

So what’s the answer to these common project management problems in manufacturing and distribution companies? The answer might surprise you, because it’s rarely discussed in discussed in emerging and mid-sized manufacturing circles …

It’s a project management organization (PMO).

A PMO is a team that provides centralized oversight to coordinate and align projects, resources and standards across an organization.

This coordinating group has a broad mission to deliver clarity, oversight and effectiveness across your strategic initiatives. A PMO can (and should) fully embody your culture, business objectives and operating model.

At a high level, the key responsibilities of the PMO include:

• Defining and upholding expectations for how projects and resources are managed.
• Curating documentation, measurements and historical insights to ensure consistency.
• Driving on-time, in-budget delivery of your most critical initiatives.

Structurally, a PMO usually consists of a director overseeing one or more project managers. It also incorporates business analysts who handle translation between IT and key user groups to keep development aligned with business objectives. Then functional subject matter experts can be pulled in to support specific initiatives as needed and on a finite basis, knowing they can return to their day jobs when the project is complete.

How Syte’s PMO Approach Is Different

When you hear the term “PMO,” do you envision unnecessary bureaucracy and rigid rules that feel out of step with your culture? If so, you’re not alone — that’s a common reaction from manufacturing companies.

Syte Consulting Group’s approach to building a PMO is fundamentally different.

We emphasize flexibility rather than a one-size-fits-all template. We take the time to understand your unique needs and build a structure tailored to your business. With our “crawl, walk, run” philosophy, we help develop the right foundation for managing critical initiatives and fueling growth at a pace that serves you best.

This includes matching roles with the right talent, mentoring emerging project leaders and strategically leveraging outside experts. The goal is driving efficiency, effectiveness and cost-savings through a more intentional look at capabilities and capacity — not creating bureaucracy for its own sake.

With Syte guiding your PMO setup and evolution, you gain a partner that truly understands the needs of manufacturers. We have configurable frameworks that help you scale and optimize operations through disciplined project delivery that is tailored to how you work.

Project Management Models Designed for Manufacturers and Distributors

A PMO provides the systems and talent needed for executing complex initiatives for manufacturing companies — and a PMO can absolutely use a flexible, customized approach that allows you to optimize operations without compromising culture.

If concerns around staffing constraints, mismatched roles or lack of project management standards resonate with you, the time is now to explore solutions. With targeted PMO implementation services, Syte Consulting Group partners with you long-term to alleviate growing pains. We provide objective insights around resource gaps and have a network of project talent to propel your specific growth journey.

Reach out to start a conversation around assessing current project management practices and structuring roles for scalability. Our team brings an approach shaped by decades of lessons learned across manufacturing and distribution implementations. Discover what intentional support looks like when it’s purpose-built for businesses like yours.

>> Download this report as a PDF to share with your team!