Doing More with Less

I found this site while researching for calendar options to manage events. As a certified LEAN practicioner in the manufacturing industry, it is not uncommon for me (and all LEAN freaks) to always be looking for waste in a situation, activity or manufacturing process. While currently learning the shipbuilding industry and project management methodologies, I am seeing areas where there is excessive waste. (Have you ever heard of the 7 deadly wastes?) One observation is that a project manager over a very large ship construction project cannot be in 27 different locations at the same time, while giving direction to supervisors on 2 shifts. There is a better way.

www.zoho.com is a services based WEB 2.0 website that has more than 20 applications. I am intrigued with the Project Management section. We are using a commercial professional program to manage the 4 projects that make up the one large scheule for this ship we ar building, but day to day details are managed by fire drill. Using a program like ZOHO would give our leaders the ability to communicate and manage the entire team, uuing the same methods we use to manage construction. Tasks, Milestones, Document Sharing, Forums, Milestones, Calendar (my favorite), Time Tracking, and gantt charts are included in this package.

I can see this as a valuable tool to eliminate the fire drills I am seeing every day-lost information, missed deadlines, people left out of the loop, people not notified of upcoming material needs, waiting, waiting, waiting, etc.