Relevance of Key Performance Indicators to the monitoring phase of industrial workflows, and Control Charts implementation as an improvement proposal

The thesis project, developed in partnership with Capgemini Italia S.p.A., had the goal to highlight the relevance of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the monitoring and control phase of industrial processes and to search for potential areas of improvement, by considering a simulated Capgemini client (an engineering and manufacturing company) standard process monitoring method for the purpose of this paper. The paper focuses on one hypothetical work perimeter, defined as Services (S), which is linked to the management of engineering technical information. Key Performance Indicators data and some of their structures, described in this paper, have been modified to respect potential confidential constraints, but in such a way that in some cases the original trend has been maintained while in others, new trends have been simulated to test the sensitivity of the statistics implementation described in the improvement proposal, which is part of this thesis. The paper initially provides, through the first chapter, a description of the four macro-phases of Project Management workflow, highlighting the relevance of the “Monitoring and Control” phase, where Key Performance Indicators are involved. The second chapter instead, provides an overview about two main regulations related to Quality, such as the ISO 9001 (applicable to all companies) and the IATF 16949 (specific for the automotive sector), underlying the importance of their implementation. The aim of these regulations, respectively, is to provide specific requirements for the management of the company organization, targeting customer satisfaction and to provide improved quality products to automotive customers worldwide. The third chapter then describes the work perimeter in question and its field of application, to deliver an example on how the IATF 16949 is practically expressed, also considering the simulated client requirements. The fourth one instead, focuses on the detailed description of how Key Performance Indicators are designed, applied, monitored, and reviewed, in the work perimeter previously described. Finally, the fifth chapter focuses on the improvement proposal regarding the standard monitoring method, describing the implementation of Control Charts and highlighting the related advantages.