About this Presentation
Circor Aerospace & Defense’s on-time finish performance of new product development projects was not at the expected level. They suffered from projects finishing late, problems with specifications, silo phenomenon, and they were limited in their capacity to run projects by a capacity constraint in the Qualification Laboratory. They decided to implement Critical Chain Project Management. They began with 3 pilot projects. During this pilot phase they increased the capacity of the bottleneck department. Associated project plannings have been reviewed and adjusted to be CCPM-compliant: the sequence of activities became more logical with realistic leadtimes and several optimization measures to achieve the projects faster were identified and implemented. They also changed and enhanced their management routines to facilitate the coordination & synchronization between key actors. The project durations were reduced, and the projects finished on time. The efficiency and throughput of the New Product Development also increased. Following the success of the pilot projects, they then rolled out the Critical Chain Way on their entire portfolio. All these actions resulted in better managerial alignment, improved communication and better problem escalation within the project teams. It also provided Circor Aerospace & Defense with better, more challenging and more realistic, project schedules, and gave them much better visibility on the project’s progress.
What Will You Learn
To help you get the most value from this session, we’ve highlighted a few key points. These takeaways capture the main ideas and practical insights from the presentation, making it easier for you to review, reflect, and apply what you’ve learned.
Learn how Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) can shorten development cycles in aerospace and defense by focusing effort on the true constraint in highly complex, regulated programs.
Understand why traditional stage-gate and task-centric planning often produces delays and rework, and how CCPM’s buffer and resource focus reduces cycle time and risk.
See how aligning cross-functional teams around constraint-based priorities and execution discipline improves coordination between engineering, testing, and production readiness.
Gain insight into practical lessons from real implementations — including handling technical uncertainty, compliance impacts, and sustaining flow under shifting program demands.
Instructor(s)
Frédéric Grehal
Frédéric Gréhal, After having held various management positions, notably as Plant Manager in large industrial companies, such as Aubert & Duval, Frédéric Gréhal, a Nuclear Engineer graduate from Centrale Lille, a renowned French Engineering School, has been the Vice-President and General Manager of Circor Aerospace & Defense for 8 years. Seduced by the concepts of the Theory Of Constraints, Frédéric Gréhal has been implementing them for many years in the various companies he has worked in. He promoted and initiated Critical Chain at Circor.