Background

In the twenty-first century, a lot of competition is faced by global business firms due to technological progress, requirements of customers, dynamic business industry and liberalisation of trade. The competitive forces are unleashed by the liberalised market and the scenario of business is continuously changing due to which competition is increasing day by day (Sokovic et al, 2010). With the rapid development of China's building materials industry, building decoration materials industry is also developing rapidly. Product is more and more pay attention to technology and energy-saving design. With the rapid development of people's living level and energy consumption, people attach importance to the use of energy and environment protection. The focus of this condition is on available scarce resources, customers, and leadership in the market, in their industry. Due to the dramatic change in the environment, the capability of organization for adapting, responding and aligning itself with needs of business is crucial for its long term development and survivals (Delen and Dalal, 2008). For staying progressed and productive, various advanced tools are used by most of the organizations for ensuring their competitiveness in the market. Nowadays, the managers of companies are taking rational decisions with innovative and creative strategies through which they can compete in corporate business world (Sage and Rouse, 2009).

Various methodologies and tools are used by different companies to implement a quality management for continuous improvement in quality. The label of the program can be different like TQM (Total Quality Management), Operational Excellence and Six Sigma. In order to effectively manage a project, most of the organizations now a day’s use Deming Cycle for ensuring high quality of the project. This technique is difficult to some extent and there is a need of proper planning for using this methodology for engineering project management. In engineering projects, there is a high demand of ensuring quality, because there is an involvement of different difficult and tough procedures. In order to ensure high quality of these kinds of projects, Deming Cycle is highly preferable by most of the organizations. This involves using techniques and methods that are highly advanced. It is very significant that selection of tools and techniques must be done through the proper team and must be applied in a proper way. In order to successfully implement approaches and techniques, there is a need to completely understand those techniques and to have proper knowledge regarding that method and its application in processes of organization (Zeng et al, 2015).

Deming proposed a cycle named as PDCA cycle in which there are different steps that must be followed while managing quality in an Engineering project. This is a tool that is used for ensuring continuous improvement in a project. A continuous approach of problem solving is described by PDCA cycle. This tool is highly used by most of the organizations in industry now. In PDCA cycle different steps are involved; Plan, Do, Check and Act. The cycle of PDCA is formed for using as a changed model and when one step is completely followed, and then it moves towards next step. Usually, different phases must be gone through in case of PDCA cycle, before accomplishment of desired outcomes (Wang et al, 2014). There is high applicability of PDCA cycle in engineering project management. This process is used by organization for improving the quality of project and there is a need of learning ways of implementing it successfully. There have been different researches done on analyzing the use of Deming cycle for quality management in organizations. This study will be done on a building exterior decoration enterprise China, which uses the Deming cycle to carry on the overall control to the project, pursues the enterprise profit, but this research will focus typically on analyzing the Engineering Project Management in application of Deming Cycle.

 

Research Aim

The aim of this research is to use a case to evaluate engineering project management in the application of Deming Cycle. Enterprises in the management of PDCA process management mode, to bring some changes in the project management. The use of the Deming cycle didn’t bring about the rising cost to the enterprise, but a lot of cost saving. At the same time, engineering enterprises should be prepared in a timely manner, achieve the comprehensive budget management. Hope that this research can provide inspiration to relevant enterprises in improving management.

 

Research Objectives

Following are research objectives that will be achieved through this research;

• To identify the importance of Deming Cycle for effective management of project.
• To evaluate the use of Deming Cycle in Engineering Project Management.
• To understand Engineering Project Management in the Application of Deming Cycle.

To analyze the use of Deming Cycle for managing engineering projects in a building exterior decoration enterprise, China.

 

Scope of Study

The present research will be done on the building exterior Decoration Company operating in China and the data will be collected from Project Manager of company related to use of Deming Cycle for managing engineering project.

The project manager's management ability and technical ability play a decisive role in the project management. The project manager lead the team to complete the project cycle, ensure everyone understand the plan and get feedback. So data for this research will be gathered from project manager of building exterior decoration company, who are responsible for managing a project. The main focus of this study will be the Process design and management of external decoration materials. For enhancing generalizability of study, the organization with large size has been chosen.

 

Literature Review

Many of the references and authors have explained projects in various ways leading stress on various aspects. Summarizing the given explanations, this research explains the project as: A temporary endeavour (that has an end time and a beginning) undertaken the given particular cycle of Execution, Planning, Definition, Initiation ad Close to make some unique product, outcome or service with the help of coordination of financial, material and human resources and novel organization (Stanleigh, 2008).

Son et al (2013) conducted a study Application of PDCA Cycle for Performance Management and found that there is a positive significant relationship between stage of planning and stage of implementation. In addition to this, they found that implementation stage and completion stage depend on each other. In the end, they found that there is mediating role of implementation stage between planning and completion stage of project.

A project consists of explained scope, consists of a limited resource, has a lot of people who have various skills and basically elaborated in the entire life cycle (Qi et al, 2013). Different tools and techniques are used in the project to plan, direct, coordinate and monitor different aspects of business and innovative ways of using these tools and techniques help in manufacturing the product or service on time, with lesser cost and with needed quality. This also ensures a high satisfaction level of customers. Usually, project management is used widely in some kind within different organizations. There is no industry in which there is no practise of project management. With the help of project management, goals are clarified and problems are identified. The use of Deming Cycle assists in isolating activities and easily monitoring outcomes. In addition to this, engineering project management increases responsibility as isolation of work can be done and the assignment of responsibilities is easily possible through this. Through Deming Cycle, proper concentration is given on some particular and significant tasks (Olawale and Sun, 2012).

In central procedure, the comparison is done between actual outcomes with target or standard point. After comparing the results, the difference is analyzed for finding corrective measures are taken in case of high disparity. The general definition of the monitor is followed in repeated and dynamic feature of continuous improvement and is shown by PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act). This is also termed as Deming Cycle (Jin et al, 2012).

The use of PDCA cycle has been considered to be highly effective as it involves the right first time approach. When companies adopt PDCA cycle, then it means that they are searching for better ways of improvement. This is not only a tool, but it is a complete process of continuous improvement. The most significant feature of PDCA is in its ‘act’ stage, when a project is completed and after that again cycle. gets started for bringing more improvement (Gershon and Rajashekharaiah, 2013).

Methodology

Research Method

For the conduction of this research, the quantitative research method will be utilized. With the help of this method, the researcher will utilize the numerical data. This method is beneficial in order to acquire numerical data regarding the research topic (Cresswell, 2013). Most often the finance and economics researchers use the quantitative research method. Although, the social sciences’ researchers also use the research approach. The main approach of this method is to quantify items and events. For the adoption of this method, the quantification of the variables are done which are being used in the research. The results of the study are valid and reliable and it has higher generalization. With the help of quantitative research method, the researcher’s biasness related to someone can be removed. Although, the information gathered with the help of this approach is quite limited (Pickard, 2012).

Questionnaires

Questionnaires will be used for the collection of the data under quantitative research method. The formation of questionnaires will be done with the items linked with variables that are being identified in the study. The selection of measurement scale will be used as a basis of test scores’ accuracy. The researcher will make the use of five point likert scale in this research. The formation of scale was done in order to seek the feedback of the participants relative to all of the items being utilized in questionnaire. The questionnaire’s range is from 1 to 5, 1 is for ‘Strongly Disagree’ and 5 is for ‘Strongly Agree’. The items about the demographic data of participants will also be included in the questionnaire.

 

Case study analysis

The analysis of the case research will also utilize for the adoption of quantitative research method. The research of a building exterior decoration enterprise China will be identified for the research of application of Deming cycle in engineering project management. This conduction method of research will assist in acquiring feedback of team with the help of questionnaires. The quantitative research method will help in assuring the reliability and credibility of study. The information relevant to Deming Cycle will be collected through team who work in a company. The population of the current research will be a building exterior decoration enterprise China.

Sampling Technique

Bryman and Bell (2015) have stated that sample size should not be considered as some reliable source for the formation of the sample representative. The procedure which will be used for the selection of sample is also significant and it should be true representative of research population. Objective sampling will be utilized in this study. In probability sampling, time and high cost are also involved. Therefore, with the help of identification of all of the constraints, convenient sampling will be utilized, due to the reason that it is the most appropriate sampling technique in case of financial and time constraints (Bryman, 2012).

 

Date Analysis

After data collection, the analysis will be done with the help of SPSS 20. This will be utilized for the descriptive analysis to analyze the link between independent and dependent variables, correlation and regression analysis will be utilized. Along with this, to check the reliability of tool (questionnaire), the checking of reliability will be done.

References

 

Bryman, A., 2012. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

 

Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015. Business research methods. Oxford university press.

 

Creswell, J.W., 2013. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

 

Delen, D.U.R.S.U.N. and Dalal, N.I.K.U.N.J., 2008. Successful business process transformation at JD Edwards. Business Process Transformation, pp.237-250.

 

Gershon, M. and Rajashekharaiah, J., 2013. How many steps to quality? From Deming cycle to DMAIC. International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 11(4), pp.475-489.

 

Jin, H., Huang, H., Dong, W., Sun, J., Liu, A., Deng, M., Dirsch, O. and Dahmen, U., 2012. Preliminary experience of a PDCA-cycle and quality management based training curriculum for rat liver transplantation. Journal of Surgical Research, 176(2), pp.409-422.

 

Lundkvist, R., Meiling, J.H. and Sandberg, M., 2014. A proactive plan-do-check-act approach to defect management based on a Swedish construction project. Construction Management and Economics, 32(11), pp.1051-1065.

 

Olawale, Y. and Sun, M., 2012. PCIM: Project control and inhibiting-factors management model. Journal of Management in Engineering, 29(1), pp.60-70.

 

Pickard, A., 2012. Research methods in information. Facet publishing.

 

Qi, E., Shen, J. and Dou, R., 2013. The 19th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management: Engineering Economics Management. Springer Science & Business Media.

 

Sage, A.P. and Rouse, W.B., 2009. Handbook of systems engineering and management. John Wiley & Sons.

 

Sokovic, M., Pavletic, D. and Pipan, K.K., 2010. Quality improvement methodologies–PDCA cycle, RADAR matrix, DMAIC and DFSS. Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, 43(1), pp.476-483.

 

Son, E.I., Hoshino, S. and Song, J.S., 2013. A Study on the Application of PDCA Cycle for Performance Management of Promotion Project for Local Industry. Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning, 19(2), pp.139-148.

 

Stanleigh, M., 2008. Effecting successful change management initiatives.Industrial and commercial training, 40(1), pp.34-37.

 

Wang, H.D., Chang, G.L., Deng, J.P., Zheng, J.J. and Zhao, Y.L., 2014, August. Theoretical Research on New Method of Highway Engineering Quality Supervision and Management-Comprehensive Six Sigma Quality Management. In Applied Mechanics and Materials (Vol. 584, pp. 2250-2263).

 

Zeng, S.X., Tam, C.M. and Tam, V.W., 2015. Integrating safety, environmental and quality risks for project management using a FMEA method. Engineering Economics, 66(1).