Project Management for R&D

This Business Scenario Map is designed for all industries. It shows how the project manager works closely together with the team members and management in a research and development (R&D) project. The Map illustrates the benefits of the project management system as part of SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM). After management has triggered a new product development, the project manager sets up the project structure and network, based on templates. The comprehensive project management solution enables him or her to manage schedules, resources, assigned documents and materials, costs, and budgets. Team members are notified via workflow when they need to fulfill their project-related tasks according to the overall network. They report on progress, and immediately the actual dates and costs are updated so that management can monitor the project anytime. The result is efficient management of projects, which provides significant value potential, because each day gained in an R&D project saves money and brings products to the market faster.

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Value Potentials	Business Benefits
	New product development can be triggered using advanced tools, e.g. portfolio management
Up to 20% reduced product development time*	All phases of development projects are supported from concept through to planning and execution to the closing of a project,
Up to 30% reduced Project Set Up Time*	New projects can be set-up quickly by using templates and graphical interfaces
	Milestones or confirmations can be used to trigger workflows, e.g. to notify responsible agents to fulfill their project-related tasks
Up to 20% higher delivery date accuracy*	All kinds of predefined reports allow effective project controlling regarding progress, costs, budgets, schedules and resources
	Baselining of project versions enables tracking the history of projects

Management

Project Manager

Team Members

Project controlling

Trigger new product development

Close project

Trigger next activities manually or via workflow

Confirm milestones

Assign documents and resources

Set up project structure using templates

Process final activities, e.g. procurement

Fulfill project related tasks and report progress

Source:
* Discussions with Customers

The value potentials shown in this table have been reported by selected SAP customers or independent third parties as referenced herein. However, there is no guarantee that such value potentials can be realized in any particular customer-specific business processes, and SAP does not make any representations and disclaims any liability as to the appropriateness of the referenced value potentials for any specific customer situation.
©SAP AG 2008

Business Benefits	Value Potentials
Full integration between project and document management enables direct access to documents for project managers and team members	Up to 50% reduced costs for interfaces*
Project-oriented procurement or production are enabled via seamless integration


Project Management for R&D When management has decided to develop a new product, triggered by internal portfolio management or external market research, time to market becomes the crucial success factor. A comprehensive and flexible project management tool is needed to optimize the use of resources and the network of activities, including the interdependencies between them. When a company has been in business for quite some time, a lot of experience is accumulated. When this experience is fed into templates for different kinds of development projects, it can be used by everybody, even by new employees. So templates ensure the re-use of existing knowledge, as well as fast project set up. Documents are an important part of projects in R&D. They are used as input for tasks such as specifications as well as output of designs or test protocols, for example. These documents should not be managed separately they need to be linked to the project. With SAP PLM you can assign documents to the part of the project structure where they belong, or to the relevant activity in the network. This ensures faster document access and higher quality. Another important task of the project manager is the selection of appropriate resources and the planning of resources to avoid overload. When this is done and the project is released, the different team members have to be notified about their activities, and all the information they need has to be provided as well. This can be done automatically with workflow support. The confirmation of an activity or milestone can trigger the next workflow tasks. At any time, team members can send project elements or documents to each other with a note. For important documents, distribution lists can be set up, so that everybody is notified automatically as soon as the document is changed. These mechanisms ensure that no time is lost due to lack of information or communication. As soon as work has been done on activities, team members confirm them, in order to report progress continuously. Due to tight integration with SAP Financials, the actual costs are automatically posted to the project, at the same time as the actual dates are used to update the schedule. This allows real-time controlling of the costs and budgets. The comprehensive reporting capabilities of SAP PLM project management support out-of-the-box reporting for all aspects of a project: progress analysis (including milestone trend analysis), cost and budget controlling, schedules, and resources. Planned and actual data can be compared, and alerts can be sent as soon as differences become too great. Finally, tight integration with procurement and production are an important feature. You can assign single materials or entire bills of material to activities, in order to trigger procurement and production from the project. All project dates are used to calculate the procurement and production schedules. Project-specific stock is supported, as well as direct posting of all procurement and production to the project. This is of particular interest if prototyping and testing activities are part of R&D projects.