Interaction through online means was actually a rather useful skill to further develop through this class. Social skills are key in industry and everything is digital based where alot meetings and communication are through online portals. These skills are crucial for a project manager to utilize and master and this course has provided me an…[Read more]

An important aspect is proper communication via email or video conferences. communication can remedy many issues and also help strengthen a relationship to begin with. One thing I have noted with suppliers is ensuring that the expectations of the product ordered are very clear. Each and every vendor probably supplies to multiple different clients…[Read more]

I have seen the opposite actually in industry so far in regards to rewarding “individual effort”. There were a few rather big milestones hit upon my time at my company and generally the entire project team got recognition rather than individual recognition. I think it is based up to the managers discretion and the theme in the company I work for…[Read more]

There are rather evident benefits to retaining talent. But it is also dependent on the job in which you are retaining the talent for. If it is a rather skilled position, like a CNC machinist or a design engineer, retaining talent for those roles may be more important than other positions that can be easily replaceable. It ensures smooth flow of…[Read more]

I think there are a few factors to this question. Some people can very well be very involved in their project and want to see a project come to fruition. Which can very well be a motivating factor that causes some to work more than 40 hours a week. Another factor could be through watching others and believing that the norm is to work more than 40…[Read more]

Typically what motivates me is that my work can directly effect a patient so taking that into mind it helps me be motivated. This thought helps me maintain a standard of work and also use a strong code of ethics especially on the quality side. I used to work with insulin pumps at a previous job and my manager actually brought in a young girl that…[Read more]

I do believe that a managers motivation can directly feed into the project teams motivation. If the leader of the project is not passionate or motivated about a project it is tough to believe the team would be. Simple compliments and recognition can go a long way in a project team. Not saying compliment every single little thing but complementing…[Read more]

As everyone stated above, there are a whole host of reasons why someone would leave their job. I think a main contributing factor is due to mundane projects and day to day activities. I have heard countless times from colleagues that they have left work because what started out to be an exciting task turned out to be repeated day in a day out.…[Read more]

I believe most of us go into engineering hoping to start out on the technical side of things. For me, that was what I was interested in for sure. I enjoy utilizing the skill set learned through school and internships to solve real life problems either on the manufacturing side or the design side. I see myself working on the technical side of…[Read more]

Communication is imperative to the success of any project, especially with larger companies. One thing I think is important is for the project manager to have a proper communication stream with upper management and then that can be disbursed through the project team. One thing I have noted in industry is that have the R&D/quality folks that deal…[Read more]

Agreed, I do not see much value from selecting an alternate source from the same company. I also do not see as much value in selecting a second source all the time for critical components. Other measures can also be looked into such as ensuring there is sufficient safety stock of a same component within your own inventory. Typically what I have…[Read more]

I think human resource management plays a key role in ensuring employee turnover is not high. There are rather steep learning curves from company to company and if one medical device company has to continually turn over new employees and train them that could be rather hindering to the project. This could cause massive delays especially and if the…[Read more]

Within my company, budget cuts are typically handled through re-distribution of responsibilities. The project manager of my team took on a lot more responsibility once cuts were administered. Additionally, we borrowed resources from other groups that we closely worked with through collaboration with other managers. At the end of the day we were…[Read more]

The comments above really touched upon the different types of changes in the monitoring and controlling phase. Within larger companies typically what I have noted is that ECOs are much more common than NDCs or DNCs. With my current position there are quite a bit of ECO’s that come my way through or that I generate post market data or complaints.…[Read more]

I would have to agree that out of the five listed, effective communication is key for any project. From my experience, alot of projects have teams that are spread across evenly throughout the world. Effective communication is key to allow everyone to be alignment on key deliverables as well as important changes to the projects. Having everything…[Read more]

There a multitude of ways schedule variance can occur within industry. We learned from the lecture that schedule variance is the difference between your earned value and planned value. Generally if you have a negative schedule variance, means you are behind schedule in the sense that what your project is worth today is worth less than what it was…[Read more]

I believe it is important to assess the change from a patient impact point of view. Any small design change can have rather large implications to sterility, packaging, or even biocompatibility. These types of changes should be heavily considered and observed from those standpoints and generally, there are SMEs that will assess the change from…[Read more]

With my current position I deal with a lot of ECO since the product line I work with was from an acquired company and currently out in the market. The ECO was initiated after staining was observed on one of the components within the kit. That was the justification for the change request. The solution did indeed change the design and as a result…[Read more]