TERADYNE CORPORATION-THE JAGUAR PROJECT Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Teradyne Corporation-The Jaguar Project Case Study Solution

The case illustrates the Project management approach and techniques used by the Teradyne Company, a semiconductor testing company that offers the testing services to the customers and mainly the players in engineering and electronics industry. Teradyne is an engineering based company, with the hier archal placement of engineers on the top main positions of the organization.The company has been initiated by the two co-colleagues and students of MIIT to offer the semi-conductors and chip testing services to the clients.

From its initiation,the company established the culture of managing the projects and improving the overall process for the future use. In addition, the culture elaborated the sense of empowerment and pro-active approach in the organization, which authorized the engineers to self-drive in the process and work on the projects.Since the company excelled in testing services, it expanded globally in Japan, China, and Germany.Over the period of time,with increasing market propensity and projects, the company started facing the issues of mismanaged project processes and the use of tools that not only over-emphasized the team efforts on a certain least important project than the critical one. In addition, the self-drive in a culture created the distracted organizational culture in which the individual competed on an individual basis rather attain the company’ visions.

In such scenario, O’Brienthe project manager of the Jaguar project has to streamline the processes and the use of tools to make the effective attainment of the deadlines and also the sustainability of the value proposition in the same limited time. However, the development of such measures and process is not easy and hence requires a detailed change in culture, management and the scope of the projects.

Keywords:  Culture management, leadership, organizational structure, Empowerment, SOC

Introduction

Teradyne has been the world’s largest, globally expanded and successful manufacturers and supplier of the semiconductor testing equipment, used to test the speed, the efficiency of the semi-conductors under different platforms and under different conditions. The company has been founded by the two co-colleagues and students of the MIIT university, Alex d’ Arbel off and Nick De wolf. From the initiation of the organization, the company focused to attract and retain the best talent in the field of engineering to super succeed the market competition and to develop a certain competitive advantage in the market in the field of best testing services.

TERADYNE CORPORATION-THE JAGUAR PROJECT Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Over the period of time, the company developed culture of self-management,empowerment, allowing the employees to select and dive in the project information itself to learn and manage the profits. This on one hand improved the loyalty, accountability, and enthusiasm of the employees while on the other hand created a competitive environment within the organization.In addition to this, under the cultural and organizational perspective, Teradyne promoted the idea of self-learning and then its implementation on overall projects that are taken in the future.However, due to the empowerment of the employers and the existing approach towards projects’ selection, the company started facing the default product issues or testing services at a higher rate, this called for the deployment of the TQM tools by the management. Though these tools resolved and reduced number of issues, however, careered the resistance among the employees for their freedom.

Perhaps, in 2001, the project Jaguar initiated under the leadership of O’Brien 25-year veteran to launch a new product line that would generate the revenues for the company for the next decade.The aim of the project has been to upstream the project approaches and the effective utilization of the project tools to meet the client’s deadlines with full maintenance of the value proposition.Since in the past, the company started missing the deadlines and lack of measurement of the progress and performance along with the development of the project,milestones, the Jaguar project has been envisioned as a culmination to develop and establish new strategies and project management approaches to improvise the product development process, followed previously in the organization.

In addition to this, since the company aimed to develop a unified platform to test multi-product, it required the management to develop a flexible platform strategy supported by strong usage of the project tools to streamline the product development activities.

The Jaguar Project

Since with the fast moving technology and increasing competition in the market, Teradyne faced the increased pressure to stream line its project activities and to develop an innovative flexible platform for testing the multi semi-products at the same time, hence to initiate the new product line, the project Jaguar came into existence under the leadership of O’Brien.

The main objective of the project has been to develop a high performing flexible platform to test the multiple types of semi conductors in a series. This required great resources and the expertise to develop such a platform.Since such platform will meet the needs of different testing equipment’s it will allow the company to develop a certain competitive advantage in the market and reduce the cost of operations.In addition to this, since the focus of the management has been to imply new project management tools to improvise the product development processes, such tools included the WBS system Fish bone structure and critical path analysis to gauge and analyze the performance of the project.Though the development of critical path tool and its usage allowed the individuals to redress the project stage and the need of the resources or management tools and the intervention of the higher management, it failed to assess and develop the right metrics to address the issue like the completion stage of the project or how much work left undone.....................

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