Management of one-of-a-kind manufacturing projects in a distributed environment

One-of-kind manufacturing, for example deliveries of process plants, fulfil the characteristics of projects and thus also generic project management practices may be applied for them. In the present operation environment the activities are distributed in a network; for each delivery a "virtual enterprise" is created to realise the customer order. The distribution makes the management of the delivery project both important and difficult. In many cases it is necessary to distribute also part of the management by assigning the responsibility of compound elements or tasks to trusted partners. The distribution increases the importance of information exchange and communication in the project. The project information is important both for the project manager and for efficient project operations. Since the sources and users of the information are distributed tools and channels to exchange and share the information in a user-friendly and acceptable way are needed. The paper describes a typical manufacturing project and management processes and identifies the information utilised in them. As the role of information is crucial it is discussed, how the project manager and the project team could be supported by information management tools. The work is based on the development of a "project workbench" demonstrator in co-operation with the project managers and team members of a Finnish project contractor.