In today’s highly dynamic and unpredictable project environment, companies need to be able to manage changes quickly and effectively, otherwise, the final product will not be current and will only go to waste. Traditional project management approaches that focus on planning are no longer efficient and companies are forced to adopt new ways of working. As a result, more flexible agile project management (APM) approaches have emerged over the last decades. Originally developed for the software industry, APM is now increasingly recognized and adopted also by other industry sectors. However, due to some discipline-specific differences, the adoption of APM by non-software companies is challenging and requires many adjustments and high financial input. While the larger organizations have sufficient resources to make such a transition, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generally cannot afford to do so, and therefore need alternative strategies to increase their agility and stay competitive on the global market. In this paper, we present a case study of a Slovenian medium-sized manufacturing company that implemented only certain APM practices separately and not as part of a structured APM methodology, and still managed to achieve significant benefits: improved communication, faster detection of discrepancies, more effective problem-solving and greater flexibility. The results also suggest that APM practices, even when implemented separately, positively impact project success in terms of both efficiency and stakeholder satisfaction, and can thus help in establishing an economically, socially, and environmentally more sustainable workplace.

In this paper, we present the impact of concurrent engineering strategies, methods, and tools on product sustainability. Concurrent engineering can be used to achieve the primary goals of a product realization project: lower costs, shorter times, high quality, and increasing value. Currently, it is important that new products also meet product sustainability goals, such as economic, environmental, and social goals. The sustainability of a product can be influenced the most in the early stages of product development, so in this paper, we present a customized quality function deployment (QFD) method called the house of sustainability, which translates sustainability requirements into technical solutions for a product. A seven-step process for implementing a sustainable product realization project is also proposed, in which the house of sustainability is one of the most important tools. The proposed process is illustrated with an example of a concurrent product realization project in engineering to order production.

In order to survive in today’s highly competitive global market, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have had to transition from sequential to concurrent product development, which significantly shortens development cycles, reduces costs, and ensures high product quality. Despite its many benefits, concurrent product development is still based on detailed upfront planning and cannot address the challenges related to today’s ever-growing uncertainty, constantly changing environment, and unstable requirements. A potential solution to this problem could be in more flexible and value-driven agile project management (APM) approaches, typical of software development. In this paper, we propose a new product development model specifically appropriate for SMEs that combines concurrent product development principles with APM elements. It is designed as a loop of five repetitive steps (macroplan, microplan, iteration activities, review, and retrospective) that are being executed within individual concurrent development loops. The application of the model is presented on a real case example of process development and small batch manufacture of a complex wiring harness. The study reveals many benefits of the proposed model, such as improved communication, faster detection of discrepancies, more effective problem solving, and greater flexibility. A positive impact on project success is also observed.

Project management of product/service orders has become a mode of operation in many companies. Although these are mostly cyclically recurring projects, risk management is very important for them. An extended risk-analysis model for new product/service projects is presented in this paper. Emphasis is on a solution developed in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The usual project activities risk analysis is based on evaluation of the probability that risk events occur and on evaluation of their consequences. A third parameter has been added in our model: an estimate of the incidence of risk events. On the basis of the calculated activity risk level, a project team prepares preventive and corrective measures that should be taken according to the status indicators. An important advantage of the proposed solution is that the project manager and his team members are timely warned of risk events and they can thus activate the envisaged preventive and corrective measures as necessary.

Giving an offer to a consumer and knowing the average cost of the product (ACP) for the product along the entire production process, depending on the size of the order, can be a very important indicator which also has an impact on the lean production process. This paper presents a mathematical model to analyze the impact of customer changes (changes in the product type, quantity and/or quality) on the lean production process, and thus on the average production price (ACP). Any change in the process could mean a deviation from the lean process, which means an increase of the ACP for the company, which is the main goal of Industry 4.0. The measurements can be performed on all of the operations of the production process in a company, or only the most critical operations in terms of waste can be selected. The model was tested on an example of a product from a Slovenian company. The average cost of the product in the selected work operation turned out to be 71% higher than the optimal case due to an excessive stock of semi-finished products. Excessive stock can lead to a situation in which the product’s own price even exceeds the selling price of the product, which of course leads to the loss of the company.