Project Charter Document: Format for System/Process Improvement or Design Project

1. Company/Organization Name:

2. Project Team:
 Student-team
 Team members from Company, one of whom must be the project champion or process owner

3. Project Title:

4. Project Duration:
 Start Date and Target Date to achieve project goal

5. Project Motivation:
 3-4 sentences to explain why this project is important to the company

6. Project Goal:
 Must clearly identify the process/system that is being improved or designed
 For projects to improve an existing system/process:
o Define the specific performance measures that the project aims to improve
o Must indicate current baseline value of the performance measure as well as the
improvement target that the project aims to achieve
 For projects to design a new system/process:
o Define the requirements (target value of key performance metrics) that the new
system/process design should satisfy (e.g., throughput, cycle time, etc.)
o Also, define constraints that need to be met (e.g., amount of space available for layout
of an assembly line)

7. Project Scope:
 Clarify what is in-scope as well as out-of-scope

8. Project Activities and Milestones:

 What are the activities/steps that you will perform
 What are the associated milestones

9. Project Deliverables:
 What will be the tangible outcomes from the project

10. Endorsement Statement from Project Champion or Process Owner

 The statement should acknowledge the importance of this project and the company’s
commitment to provide necessary resources and support to ensure successful project
completion.
 SAMPLE PROJECT CHARTER

Company/Organization Name: ABC Machining Company

Project Team:
 John Doe, Abe Thomas, Jane Smith, Nancy Yang
 Mike Smith (Shop supervisor), Roger Johns (Mfg. engineer), Ginger Inda (VP Operations)

Project Title: Changeover Time Reduction for CNC Turning Centers

Project Duration:
Start Date: February 8; Target Date to achieve project goal: April 30

Project Motivation:
Due to growing product variety and reducing production batch sizes, the company has to make frequent
set-up changeovers of its CNC Turning Centers. The set-up changeover currently takes an undesirably
long amount of time, and is impacting the company’s ability to meet customer demands for
responsiveness. Achieving reduction in changeover will increase available production capacity, reduce
inventory and production costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

Project Goal:
Our team aims to reduce the set-up changeover time on CNC turning centers from the current average of
4 hours to 30 minutes per changeover. (Set-up changeover time is defined as the time elapsed from
production of the last good part in the previous run to the first good part in the new run).

Project Scope:
This project is limited to the single-turret Mazak-300 series CNC Turning Centers

Project Activities and Milestones:

1. Data gathering/observations of current changeover process for at least 3 products (by end of Feb)
2. Current state analysis to identify non-value added effort and performance variability (March 1st week)
3. Brainstorming session with machine operators and supervisor to identify root causes and
improvement ideas (March 2nd week)
4. Prioritization of ideas; Development of standardized changeover instructions (March 3rd week)
5. 5S exercise to improve space/tool organization (April 1st week)
6. Recommendations and business case and impact analysis (April 2nd week)
7. Pilot test new/improved process (April 3rd week)

Project Deliverables:
 Standardized and improved set-up changeover procedures
 Prioritized list of recommendations and justification for improvement ideas
 Presentation and written report of the project findings

Endorsement Statement from Project Champion or Process Owner

Set-up changeover reduction on our Mazak CNC turning centers is of strategic importance to our
company. We will provide the team the necessary access to company personnel, information and other
resources for the duration of this project to ensure that they are successful in achieving the project goal.
= Ginger Inda, VP of Operations, ABC Machining Company