New Material Technology For Commercial Facade Panels | Vitragroup Essay.

Learning Objectives Achieved

Answer:

Vitragroup is one of the world's largest manufacturer of commercial facade panels. The company manufactures a wide range of facade products, in addition to being the leading producer of coating applicators of wall cladding panels and products with super high performance and flexibility.

Our inspiration comes from our vision to be the world's leading manufacturer of quality facade and cladding products; through close working relationship with designers, architects, developers and researchers. We pride ourselves as pacesetters in the industry, setting benchmarks in quality and manufacturing excellence. Our unrivalled customer care services sets us apart from our competitors.

Name	Role	Description
Jimmy Wright	Chairman	Jimmy Wright founded the company in the late 1970s, starting as a cottage industry and growing through the decades. He holds the vision of the company and has been instrumental in its growth, customer centric approach and close liaison with field experts.
Margaret Thatcher	Chief Executive Officer	Margaret started as a marketing assistant in 1988. He dedication and internal upbeat, coupled with her unwavering commitment to excellence has seen her rise to the position of the chief executive officer; and is the engine of growth in the firm.
Ahmed Mohammed	Head of Strategy and Innovation	Ahmed is a young man with a great vision. He heads the strategy division of the company which is tasked with development of new market strategies and product innovations.
Prof. Mariam Omar	Board Member	Mariam has extensive knowledge in material science and is tasked with advising the CEO and the head of innovation on new developments and new materials for use in developing the company's products.

Vitragroup is one of the world's largest manufacturer of commercial facade panels. The company manufactures a wide range of facade products, in addition to being the leading producer of coating applicators of wall cladding panels and products with super high performance and flexibility. For over half a decade, the company has been producing facade panels primarily using polyethylene core aluminium. However, recent developments, and new risk profiles associated with the material has necessitated a change of material. In particular, the drive to look for new materials follows the June 2017 Grenfell Tower fire disaster in London, which resulted in 80 fatalities, and was largely blamed on the use of polyethylene core aluminium panels.

The subsequent total ban on the importation, manufacture, sale and use of Polyethylene core aluminium composite panels in Australia has obliged the company to look into the development of a new materials and technology for manufacturing commercial facade systems.

The company's goal is to quickly come up with a new panel making technology, using a new form of material that is safe, quality and available for mass production of the panels. The project's budget is approximately $250 million dollars; that will go into prototyping of the company's proprietary material technologies, selection of the best technologies, upgrading the production systems and commencement of production. The development stage of the project is scheduled to begin on 1st October 2018, and will run for a period of 1 year.

This project presents an optimal product development strategy for developing facade systems. The project presents a detailed work breakdown structure for the project; from concept to production of the prototypes, resource allocation and task scheduling.

In a bid to avoid a disaster like the Grenfell Tower's, the envisioned product will be tested rigorously to ensure that its of high quality, durable, can with adverse climatic conditions and most importantly, it is completely fire proof. The project's budget and projected completion dates were arrived at by the project's steering committee, which consists of the Chairman, CEO, Strategic Manager and one board member.

An important aspect of this project is that it will be carried out with close consultation with key building customers, particularly various construction firms around Australia. This is primarily driven by the company's customer of being customer centric, and the drive to have customer buy-in on the new product. The approach will help the company model the new product based on customer preferences and expectations

Company Profile

The project's deliverables include;

• New panels design
• Certified, safe and quality material for the panels
• A working prototype panel
• A mass production facility for the new panels

• A safe, quality, certified prototype panel

A safe, durable, high quality material will be selected, and used to design and build a working prototype of the new panel. The new panel will be thoroughly tested for safety. The current production line will be upgraded to facilitate mass production of the new panel. With close working with the customers, the resulting product will be designed with the customer in mind. Contractors will have confidence in the product as safely, quality and durability is always key when selecting a construction material.

This project will strive to achieve the highest quality standards of the proposed panel design. From material selection, design, prototyping to testing, the project will strictly adhere to Australia's Building Code Standards, as outlined in the Building Code of Australia Volume 2. The company seeks to meet all requirements of ISO 10005:2005 - Quality management systems while managing this project.

The panels to be developed in this project will meet and exceed the requirements of the Building Code Australia Standards. Specifically, the quality expectations are;

• The material to be used must meet the AS 5113:2016. Fire propagation testing and classification of external walls of buildings. Standards Australia.
• The selected material must be able to withstand adverse environmental conditions such as severe weather without deteriorating in performance and safety.
• Panels will be designed to meet high aesthetic requirements.

The project will have a full quality control department; which will be tasked with inspecting the products and the processes taken to produce the product. The quality control checks includes;

• How well the project's processes adhere to quality policy.
• The product's adherence to quality, safety and legislative policies
• Fire resistance and fire proof requirement of the product
• Ability to withstand adverse weather conditions.

The project's calendar will have a five day week, 8working hours running from 8am to 5pm; with a 1 hour lunch break. The project team will therefore work for 40hours per month. All public holidays will not be off the project's working days.

Figure 1.0 Project Creation in Primavera P6

Figure 2.0 Project Start date configuration

In order to develop a work breakdown structure, a task list has to be developed. For this project, the method of choice to translate concept to prototype is 3D printing, which has most of its tasks fully automated. The overall task list for the project will be broken down into 6 broad categories, and each category will have its sub-categories or work-packages

For this project, the main task will be concept development and refinement. For any product to be produced, a concept has to be developed. Concept development will require engineers, designers to brainstorm and select materials that can be used in the development of the product. The selected material will have to be sourced before manufacturing can start. Sourcing for the materials and design work will be done concurrently.

With the total ban on the importation, manufacture, sale and use of Polyethylene core aluminium composite panels in Australia having taken place already, the company is behind schedule in coming up with a new product design, that uses a different kind of safer material. Developing this product is therefore a matter of survival for the company. Speedy completion of the project is therefore a matter of essence. For that reason, the project seeks to optimize time and resources, in order to remain competitive in the market with introduction of a new safer product.

This table outlines key resources to be used in this project.

Resource	Description
Company Chairman	The company chairman will act as the project sponsor. He will be part of the steering committee that will make critical decisions about the project; such as schedule changes, cost adjustments and approving change requests.
Chief Executive Officer	The chief executive office is the customer in this project. As part of the steering committee, the CEO will take part in approving or disallowing change requests, adjusting project funding and project schedule.
Project Manager	The project manager will play a critical role of day-to-day management of the project. The PM will organize the project team, assign roles to the team, develop the project schedule and be the liaison officer between the project team and the management.
Product Dev manager	The project development manager will be part of the project team, tasked with the concept development, material selection and concept refinement.
Engineer	The engineer will be part of the project team, and will participate in concept development, analysis of the designs as well as play part in quality inspection of the developed prototype.
Designer	The designer is a CAD specialist, tasked with the design work, implementation of the design in CAD and assisting other project team members in analysing the designs. The designer will work closely with the engineer and the product development manager to develop, analyse and refine the product concept.
Quality Control Inspector	The Quality control inspector will be tasked with inspecting the project processes, materials, designs and the resulting prototype to ensure that they are of high quality, safe and adheres to legal requirements, the companies quality policies and any other national and international policy that relates to the building codes.
Production Manager	The production manager will oversee the implementation of the prototype. The manager will be tasked with all activities relating to the translation of the design to a prototype at the factory.
Factory floor manager	The floor manager is responsible for managing factory workers who will play part in handling materials and providing support to the other team members wherever they may be needed.
Factory workers	Handle materials and providing support to the other team members wherever they may be needed.
Procurement Office	The procurement officer will - in consultation with the engineer and the product development team - make plans to acquire all materials that will be required in this project.
Truck	Trucks will be used to transport materials to the site; by using the company's own trucks, the cost of the project is expected to be sliced by some margin
Computer	Equipment to be used by the designer while developing the concept and implementing in CAD
CAD Software	To be used in drawing the design
Forklift	For lifting materials on the factory floor
3D printer	The printer will translate the designs into the actual product
Material	The material to be used in developing the panels
IT Specialist	Will provide support to the team in matters technology, such as setting up and installing the necessary software for use in design and development
Accountant	Will provide accounting services for the project, reporting on budget expense and projected budget expenses
Driver	Will be tasked with picking up and delivering all required materials to the factory using the company's truck.

To ensure that the project is completed within time and budget, an effective resource scheduling and optimization has to be developed and used. For this project the resource optimization model is built on;

• Setting all activities to be variable; allowing the work-packages to be changed, to accommodate new developments without affecting the schedule or budget
• Setting task duration after thorough evaluation of quality needs and availability of resources.
• Optimising resources workflows so as to minimize on cost and time; eliminate disruptive workflows and optimize the flow; this will allow a resource e.g. an engineer to participate in Concept development and at the same time carry out other project activities due to proper flow and schedule.

Expected Project Deliverables

In reference to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide on resource optimization, the endeavour requires that the implementation and completion dates of the project be adjusted based on resource availability. The tools to be used in this project to optimize the resources and work flows are;

With this approach, the start and finish dates of the project will be adjusted based on resource constraints (Larson and Gray, 2015). The goal in using resource levelling is to balance the demand for the project resources using the available supply. This technique will help out in situations where a resource has to perform two or more tasks within a short period of time, or where a given resource is assigned to two tasks concurrently, and there is no need to increase resources to the activities. Levelling will also play a critical role for activities where resources are under or over allocated.

Resource smoothing refers to a technique of adjusting the activities within a project , with the goal of ensuring that the required amount of resources allocated to the project do not exceed the pre-defined resource limits (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). Smoothing ensures that the planned completion of the project remains the same.

For the development of the new products, 3D printing was selected to turn concept into a prototype. The choice of  3D printing was motivated by the need to quickly develop the prototypes. With 3D printing, translating the concept to a prototype is quicker than traditional methods - such as CNC- due to the fact that the technology employs a combination of additive manufacturing and Rapid prototyping. Owing to the fact that speed is of essence in this project, bringing a new product to the market to replace the banned technology is the primary goal of the project; and as such, 3D printing is the better of the options available.  

A major advantage of using 3D printing in manufacturing is the ability to quickly  create limited number of designs and models or what is referred to as beta versions of a product. This is partly due to the fact that 3D printing takes advantage of rapid prototyping techniques (Rayna and Striukova, 2016). As a result, the technique significantly reduces the time spent in developing new products.

With 3D printing, the turn-around time for creating a product is greatly reduced. Traditionally, machining a product or prototype would have required weeks; this has been reduced to hours with 3D printing.

Using 3D printing technology, a company can easily fulfil low quantity orders of a given product (Rayna and Striukova, 2016).  This is because unlike other methods of production where the higher the number of items produced decreases the cost per piece, 3D printing cost is constant making it possible to create a few products of a given design.

With 3D printing, assembly lines can be reduced or completely eliminated, as a given product can be printed as one piece. This also eliminates complex supply chains that are associated with sourcing for many components to create a single product.

By use of 3D printing, products can be printed on demand. This eliminates the need to build-up inventories, thus saving on cost of inventory (Rayna and Striukova, 2016). Additionally, one facility can transform easily and produce products of different nature and material without the need to upgrade the facility or re-tooling

Using 3D printing will allow for the design and development of more complex and creative facade panels than by use of traditional approaches.

The technology will allow the company to shrink the life cycle of product development, thus making room for new and improved offerings. The company can therefore design and produce more innovative panels in the shortest time possible , giving it a competitive advantage.

The technology has a number of downsides, which includes;

To install 3D printers capable of printing facade panels will be a costly affair. The facility will also require many printers to enable mass production of the panels.

With 3D printing, a product is created through multiple thin layers, which are likely to introduce points of weaknesses on the panels, affecting their durability.

using 3d printing will limit the number and type of material that can be used in the production process. this is due to the fact that 3d printers can only use materials that can be melted. the technology may also limit mass production and the benefits that comes with economies of scale.

Conclusion

This report has  presented a summary of project planning, scheduling, resource allocation and budgeting for a product development project. The project intends to design and prototype a new facade panel product using new safer material, to replace the banned use of polyethylene core aluminium panels.

The proposed method of use is 3D printing, to take advantage of its rapid prototyping approach. The choice of 3D printing is based on the fact that prototyping can be very quick due to the quick turnaround time of the technology.

References

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F., 2015. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK (®) Guide. Project Management Institute.

Rayna, T. and Striukova, L., 2016. From rapid prototyping to home fabrication: How 3D printing is changing business model innovation. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 102, pp.214-224.