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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

MS, Information Technology Management Capstone

Ryan Hamze
Western Governors University
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

MS, Information Technology Management Capstone

This document is a submission for TASK 2: GWA2 DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Design & Development

Part A: Abstract
In our project, I am acting CIO in an automotive manufacturing company “
specialized in 4x4 SUVs. I am tasked with resolving a problem described by the business as
“critical cost bleed – priority 1”, where a cost trend was noticed by the CFO about increasing
operating costs, but unit production was down on average. After months of manual calculations,
the CFO traced the money bleed to the robotic assembly line, and worked with the CIO and
Assembly business unit manager to resolve some of the identified issues but was unsuccessful in
the attempt.
After a budgetary approval from the CEO, the CIO is tasked with proposing a solution
leveraging IoT technology to help address visibility issues with the robots, link operating data to
the active cost accounting software, and work with the assembly manager to propose cost-
savings measures based on the results.
Having high costs has already led the team to work with a skeleton crew, so management
voiced concerns about allocating new resources to the new projects, and have asked for detailed
proposals for each portion of the overall solution.
Stakeholders:
• CEO: Primary sponsor and Key Stakeholder representing the company board.
o Requires measurable results for a decreasing trend in costs to the overall
production numbers.
• CFO: Primary & key stakeholder, representing the bottom line of all financial
aspects of the company.
o Measurable results for a decreasing trend in costs to the assembly line.
o Link operating data to the active cost accounting software
o Provide a proposal for cost savings measures based on the results
o Address visibility issues with the robots
• CIO: Program & project manager, Key Stakeholder; representing the technology
branch.
o Propose a detailed solution to the problem of an increasing trend in
operating costs.
o Initiate, plan, implement, monitor, and close the project.
o Maintain the budget and schedule.
o Provide a proposal for cost savings measures based on the results
• Assembly BUM: Is a key stakeholder in plant operations.
o Provide a proposal for cost savings measures based on the results
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

The CIO will collect detailed requirements of all stakeholders and launch a program that
includes a subseries of IoT projects implemented on the production floor, which will ultimately
translate operational readings via sensors and funnel them into appropriate software channels that
will provide the data needed to fulfill the overall project requirements.
The CIO will record a snapshot of the current downwards cost trends that have concerned
the CEO, and close the project once that trend has turned into a positive upward trend.
Predetermined financial formulas (provided by the CFO) will determine the success or failure of
the project, along with specific milestones such as flip/stabilize the cost trend line, show an
increase in unit production, and provide a specific set of requested reports that had been
previously collected manually.
Note that our overall program implementation is out of scope for this Capstone, so we
will focus on a single process thread from A-Z that fulfills a single part of all requirements set by
the stakeholders. The reason why I chose this path is due to my personal experience in a decade-
long professional career in IT Management, where no major cost trend can be successfully
addressed by a single minor project, but rather by a large number of projects under one
program that usually redefines operations and culture.
All person names, figures, costs, and robotic operations are completely fictional and are
not confidential proprietary data any of my current or previous employers.
Vendor and software brand names are derived from market trends and google searches
and do not conflict or expose any current or previous employer's confidential info.

Part B: Needs Analysis

Problems identified specifically in the robotic assembly line area:
• An increasing cost trend
• Unit production was down on average
Causes:
• Minimal visibility to operating data
• 60% of managers time spent on building reports instead of analyzing data and making
decisions (at least 24hrs/week)
• Increased maintenance
• Broken down machines
• Undetermined production stop times
• Faulty robot assemblies
• Faulty robot welds
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

• Production halts due to lack of liquid material

.
Impact:
CEO: Is responsible for the company’s success and is accountable in front of the board of
directors. Needs to provide them with reasons for this cost bleed and a viable solution. This
project sponsor will also need to justify that the overall spending will indeed resolve the
problems and thus need to fund the initiative.
CFO: Is responsible for the company making money, controlling it’s profit and loss
statements, and everything financial. It is the CFO’s responsibility to determine the high-cost
expenditures and help facilitate solutions.
CIO: Is responsible for the technology operations of the company, and plays an active
role in helping the business leverage new and emerging technologies available in the market to
enhance and improve their business operations and increase profits.
Standards & Regulations
The solution proposed not only follows the laws and regulations of the country it’s in but
also adheres to global industry standards and best practices.
The IT industry has many regulatory bodies and best practices, but at the forefront, we
see the ITI council1 for policies, coupled with BP’s like PMP2, ITIL3, SOX4, and ISO5. The CIO
is well-versed with the industry standards and makes sure that all ICT practices (Information and
Communication Technology) are compliant with the array of government and industry
guidelines, requirements and ethics.
To be more specific, IoT is considered the next generation of IT, known in the business
world as Industry 4.06 (the fourth industrial revolution) and provides countless examples of how
cloud connectivity transforms businesses and gives them a competitive edge over their
competitors. The solution provided will redefine the business model and focus on continuous
improvements from the ground up.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Part C: Cost Analysis

A full cost analysis has been made for the project. The attached sheet “Cost
Analysis.xlsx” has been submitted and below *.png is a preview. (See figure A)
The justification for each cost has been added as an extra column to provide a more
detailed defense.

Figure 1A
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Part D: Risk Analysis

MSITM Capstone risk register template
A full risk assessment has been made for the project. The attached sheet “MSITM
Capstone Risk Register.xlsx” has been submitted and below .png is a preview. (See figure B)
All below risk screenshots can be found in the other tabs of this document.

Figure 2B
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Quantitative Risk Analysis:

Figure 3C

Qualitative Risk Analysis

Figure 4E

Cost-Benefit Analysis & Mitigation

Figure 5F
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Part E: Justification
In every business, the main goal is to deliver a superior product and the lowest production
cost possible. It’s easy to get lost in the bureaucracy and sink into functional silos where lack of
communication ends up increasing your cost quarter over quarter. We see this in the biggest of
companies, and keeping up with the market trends is not always the easiest thing to do – especially
for old school management types. In “ we see the same causes of old school
mentalities of manual excel calculations focus on the process instead of numbers, and lack of a
technology vision.
Our CIO is knowledgeable and knows how to address this by showing a cost-benefit to
management through investing in new technologies (new to them, not the industry). Whereas most
operators would think robots are taking their jobs away, our CIO provides clarification through
appropriate communication mediums to all levels of the organization and explains how this IoT
tech actually helps them do their jobs more efficiently and puts them on a path to personal career
growth.
All the sensors being installed on the robots will give the team visibility to what’s happening with
their product. Let’s take an example; The trunk assembly robot breaks down around twice a month
and shuts the line down, and the maintenance team rushes to repair the joints to get it up and
running again. This costs them manpower, costly production downtime, and parts. Their
preventative maintenance plan is built on tribal knowledge, and they choose the last Friday of the
month to take a look at all the major parts of this bot, but somehow fail to identify future problems
and seldom prevent the onslaught. After installing the vibration sensors on the 3rd and 4th elbow
joints of this robot, we begin to collect readings from the robot but realize that a simple excel
export does not provide much data that we can understand.

Our CIO, with his experience, knows that raw data must be analyzed properly, so he
provides an infrastructure that can provide high wireless bandwidth connectivity to these moving
sensors by implementing a wall-to-wall coverage SSID broadcast service after installing the new
Wireless Access Points. Once these sensors connect wireless to the AP’s, we are now able to access
this data over the company LAN, and begin to funnel all the data into the new Kepware server
running the industry-standard software KEPserverX7 which leverages OPC (which is the leading
standard for industrial automation connectivity), and provides diagnostics for Telemetry
environments. Now we begin to read the reports of high-frequency vibrations and can pinpoint the
exact moment where high stress is applied to those joints, and can now perform preventative
measures to maximize the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). But this is not enough!
KEPserverX also integrates with almost any industry-standard data historian, such as TrackSYS10
(by PARSEC) and OAS9 (Open Automation Software). ThingWorx8 is the native Kepware
interface and integrates seamlessly, but sometimes large companies opt to go with the more
complex platforms, depending on their need, but what they have in common is they store all the
data recorded and analyzed by Kepware, and by all I mean every millisecond of recorded data.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

This provides the groundwork to provide super-detailed reports on the history of a group of
machines down to a single sensor.
In our scenario, this allows us to see that after every 10 days, the excess vibrations begin to exceed
the recommended frequency threshold which is apparently caused by the short lifespan of the ball-
bearings used in the elbows. This report launches a simple investigation by the Assembly Line
Manager who decides to schedule preventative downtime maintenance to replace these ball
bearings 3 times a month, which effectively eliminates the downtime and unnecessary manpower
to react to a downed machine.
Here, we see the first cost savings come into effect, and we begin to kill off the money-gremlins
(as we so affectionally dub them in the manufacturing industry) and plug the bleed.
However, to meet the project sponsor’s deliverables, we are tasked to create an increasing
trend of cost savings, not just stabilize. We look towards new technologies such as Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, and by leveraging the experience of the top player in this
field, we can easily come to the conclusion of using the Microsoft Azure11 cloud platform.
By funneling data from our current data historian into the online Azure BLOB Storage and
databases, we can R-script using MLOps (DevOps for Machine Learning) and touch the extensive
history of all sensors on all robots. Analyzing temperature, vibration, position, humidity, and an
SOP process location in a cumulative database crunched by AI and Machine learning scripts will
provide easy matrix correlations between events, such as “low temperature, more oil leaks” or
“higher vibrations on trunk bot creates larger displacements on tail light robot installer’. This is a
key point in the company’s future. Once we have started with looking at AI-generated correlation,
we are now privileged to call this an “Industry 4.0: Smart Factory of the Future”!
Here, the upward trend begins. This is the stage where we can begin to rely heavily on specific
cost saving projects to show a positive trend in the overall profit and loss statement.
With two weeks to go, we begin training the end-users to take over the reporting and
analysis using live examples of savings already applied. And by the time we are ready to close the
project, stakeholders are all eager to accept the deliverables since they’ve been involved in the
entire process, and also been identified as “key contributors to the success of the project”.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Part F: Multi-Project Management

It’s important to maintain the quality of your deliverables for any project, especially when
you’re responsible for many projects. Senior management generally doesn’t know (or necessarily
care) about your workload and can only see what you present them with. This is why you should
always give 110% effort to the task at hand!
Also, communication is key. We will maintain a strict hierarchy of communications that allows a
healthy information flow between team members and other stakeholders.

To avoid multi-tasking and compromising on quality, we will need to delegate certain project
tasks to team leaders In our main cost analysis, we’ve allocated 3 full-time supervisory positions.
They will be divided as follows:
1. Infrastructure (Supervisor)
a. Responsible for the A-Z of all hardware involved in the projects.
b. [Justification] Will focus on servers, sensors, cabling, TVs, networking equipment.
c. Managing;
i. Electrician vendor
1. power and ethernet
ii. Maintenance group
1. sensor installation and configuration
iii. Network installation vendor
1. network patching, cisco switch physical install, AP heat map design,
and deployment.etc.
2. Software & Applications (Supervisor)
a. Responsible for all things digital.
b. Will focus on s software, licensing, websites, applications, integration, reporting,
server OS deployments, PMIS..etc
c. Managing;
i. System admins
1. To maintain server environment and deployments.
ii. Developers
1. Integration, reporting, database, training…etc
iii. Tier 1 Network CCNPs
1. Ongoing support and configuration.
iv. The first point of contact “helpdesk” for all project-related items.
1. Users will revert to this team for operational activities.
v. Vendors
1. SOW WGSs
3. Admin (Senior Supervisor)
a. Acting project manager for sub-projects and non-technical office operations.
b. Responsible for keeping track of project tasks
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

i. Responsible for all paperwork for other functional departments

ii. Responsible for updating project documents after correct change request
process
iii. Responsible for all shipping and receiving inventory.
iv. Assis other supervisors with keeping centralized track of labor hours.
v. Responsible for updating all project-related charts and graphs
vi. Responsible for scheduling recurrent project-related meetings (non-
technical)
c. Managing;
i. Shipping, Receiving, accounting, project HR, purchasing.
ii. Power-user of the PMIS software being used to track projects.

All 3 supervisors will report directly to the CIO (Project Manager) who will direct major
project milestones and lead critical meetings. These positions are justified due to the nature of the
work at hand, the CIO cannot be involved in minute tasks like specific sensor installs and their
positioning.
Since these 3 positions are a full-time commitment, we will not be using internal resources for this.
Instead, we will contract 3 positions for 4 months until project completion. The candidates will
have project management experience, and preferably an up-to-date PMP certification.
Other operational activities and projects will be impacted by this project, so the use of local
resources will be minimal. Shared resources will need the functional manager's buy-in, so the
Assembly manager will be heavily involved in directing any floor activities.
Hardware installation will be especially tricky because the team will have to work around
the ongoing operations during downtimes and off-hours to avoid getting in the way of the
production line.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Part G: Project Plan

Project Scope
Project Title: “ IoT: Smart Factory of the Future”
Project justification: Our company has a downwards trend of cost savings and is bleeding
a 12.5% loss quarter over quarter.
Project Scope Statement: The project will address Robotic Data Collection by installing
at least 600 devices including but not limited to Sensors, TVs, Servers, Networking Equipment,
PCs, to support the implementation of an IoT connectivity platform that collects sensor data,
funnels it through an OPC and a data historian, then uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine
Learning to analyze the data and provide reports that will provide operational visibility on both
operator and executive level.
Project Closure Terms: Each of the key stakeholders must sign off on these 10 deliverables
(Accept/Reject/NA).
Refer to sheet 3 of this document for identifying stakeholders. Refer to figure 7G for the
deliverables acceptance table.
For a project to be successfully marked as completed, these terms must apply prioritized in
order of appearance:
• Zero “Reject” from Project Sponsor.
• If the sponsor marks “Accept”, any reject by other stakeholders is not counted
towards the final score.
• At least 66% of the key stakeholders must have “accept” on these deliverables with
NA being an invalid count. (2 accept 1 Reject 1 NA = 2x1’ + 1x0’ +0x0’ = 2 + 0
= 2. 2/3 =66.67% = Accepted Deliverable)
Key Deliverables:
1. Provide Scope Statement
2. Weekly progress reports for overall project earned value
3. Weekly issue log meetings which include stakeholders
4. Address the root cause of the downward cost trend of 12.5%, and achieve a positive
cost savings trend of at least 6.25% within 4 months of the project start.
5. Provide 25 reports to Assembly Line management, which include OEE, MTBF,
MTBR, Exceeded Threshold levels of Vibration, ETL of torque, temperature
variance of robot operational hub, and a replica of the 19 excel sheets found in the
financial reporting folders as of (Feb 12th, 2020).
6. Remain under budget: $850,000
7. Complete project ahead of schedule deadline: June 11th, 2020.
8. Install at least 500 sensors and 100 networking/server equipment. The list must be
provided at project closure
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

9. Deploy and successfully launch software necessary for connecting sensors to

machine learning reports. 1x OPC. 1x Data Historian. 1x AI on a cloud platform.
10. Provide summary strategies to help with future cost-effectiveness, and how to
leverage current technologies.

Accept/Deny/NA Deliverables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

P.Sponsor (CEO)

P.Stakeholder 1 (CFO)

P.Stakeholder 2 (CIO)

P.Stakeholder 3 (BUM)

Figure 7G

Project Phases & Timeline

Estimated number of hours for the following:

1. Initiation: Upon approval of Project Charter

a. Feb 12th, 2020.
2. Planning and design: 2 weeks from project initiation.
a. Feb 12th + 10 business days = Feb 25th.
3. Development & Installation: 3 months (13 weeks)
a. Feb 26th + 60 business days = May 28th.
4. Monitoring and Control (Documentation & Training): 3 weeks
a. May 29th + 14 business days = Jun 10th 17:00 EOB
5. Project Closure: Upon user acceptance of deliverables.
a. June 11th, 2020

Total: 18 weeks (85 business days).

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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Milestones

Milestone 1 Project Charter approval

• Feb 12th, 2020
Milestone 2 Completion of design
• Feb 20th, 2020
Milestone 3 Submit & Approve the plan
• Feb 25th, 2020
Milestone 4 Completion of network infrastructure (Switches, AP’s)
• March 5th, 2020
Milestone 5 Installation of the server environment
• March 10th, 2020
Milestone 6 Completion of all wiring and sensors installs and network configuration
• April 1st, 2020
Milestone 7 Go live for all separate instances of KEPServerX, Microsoft Azure, and
selected historian.
• April 1st, 2020
Milestone 8 Integration and live connectivity test of at least 90% of all installed sensors
• April 30th, 2020
Milestone 9 Integration of software; live tests for 5 paths originating from sensors to
Azure report.
• May 7th, 2020
Milestone 10 First 10 R-scripted reports from Azure, showing a specific correlation
between events.
• May 22nd, 2020
Milestone 11 Completion of 95% of all technical work.
• May 25th, 2020
Milestone 12 First training session scheduled
• June 1st, 2020
Milestone 13 Completion of Training, user feedback, report finetuning.
• June 5th, 2020
Milestone 14 User acceptance of deliverables, project closure.
• June 11th, 2020.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Dependencies
Here, we can follow the critical path of 85 business days (See figure 6F), this is also
attached as a Visio diagram in the Capstone submission.

Figure 6F

Risk Factors:
Our major risk factors have been linked with delays to the technical deliverables and
possible technology incompatibilities.
The technical deliverables have been thoroughly researched and are recommended by the
Project Manager. Success is virtually ensured due to the CIO’s experience in launching similar
projects, and using an extensive list of “Lessons Learned” that apply to our corporate “
environment.
Company culture is also addressed in the Lessons Learned documents, and includes a soft
marketing email campaign led by the senior project manager (Admin) to help guide users to using
more technology to perform their daily tasks. At best, the project finishes with a 23% cost trend
improvement, at worse, the cost trend becomes 0% because the sensors without any software will
provide raw data that can be manipulated in excel to provide some basic reporting and visibility
that we never had before, and this will help us identify where the money-gremlins live.
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MS, Information Technology Management Capstone – C498

Project Launch
The kickoff meeting will include all the stakeholders and will be led by the PM. It will
include a high-level discussion of the project, and have a formal project charter signed and
approved by the Project Sponsor.
An all-hands communication will be sent out to all employees of describing
the project initiative and targets.

Software and Hardware Deliverables:

Details included in the Project Deliverables 8 & 9.

Final Output Assessment:

Most IT project lifetimes end with the project closure. In our scenario, this project ends on
June 11th, 2020, but does not stop completely. The hardware deployed, the software implemented,
and the reports developed will all become part of operational infrastructure. This means
there ill be maintenance to be done, audits to be had, along with regulatory and legal requirements.
Adhering to industry standards like PMP project management, and ITIL or COBIT
framework for documentation is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining an industry-standard
design network as the project evolves, while still being SOX compliant (for example). This will
need a skilled workforce and constant training and reevaluation of business requirements to keep
operations in a constant upwards trend of cost savings. Lean Six Sigma or World Class
Manufacturing processes will help achieve that!
However, all these standards keep the project compliant with the IT industry, but at the
core, it’s all about keeping the company alive. survival and market edge depend on the
culture change that will ensure that it remains as an “Industry 4.0: Smart Factory of the Future”!
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References

1. The Information Technology Industry Council is the “trusted leader of innovation policy”.

1.1. Retrieved from https://www.itic.org/about/

2. Project Management Professional (PMP)®

2.1. Retrieved from https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp

3. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

3.1. Or IT service management (ITSM)

3.2. Retrieved from https://www.learningtree.com/training-directory/itsm-certification-

training/

4. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) Feb 10th, 2020

4.1. Retrieved from https://www.sarbanes-oxley-101.com/sarbanes-oxley-audits.htm

5. ISO/IEC 27001 Information security management - ISO

5.1. Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/isoiec-27001-information-security.html

6. The Industry 4.0 Paradox, by Tim Hanley October 10th, 2018.

6.1. Retrieved from Deloitte https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/industry-4-

0/challenges-on-path-to-digital-

transformation/summary.html?id=us:2ps:3bi:confidence:eng:cons:050519:nonem:na:qZ

EgM7UL:1150326340:76897213611549:be:Internet_of_Things:Industry_4.0_Paradox_

Exact:nb

7. KEPserverX software by Kepware

7.1. https://www.kepware.com/en-us/products/kepserverex/
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8. ThingWorx

8.1. https://www.kepware.com/en-us/products/kepserverex/features/thingworx-native-

interface/

9. OAS Open Automation Software

9.1. https://openautomationsoftware.com/why-us/

10. TrackSYS by PARSEC

10.1. https://parsec-corp.com/traksys/

11. Microsoft Azure Machine Learning

11.1. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/machine-learning/
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Figures

A. Cost analysis
1. Figure
B. Risk Register
2. Figure
C. Quantitative
3. Figure
D. Qualitative
4. Figure
E. Cost – Benefit
5. Figure
F. Critical Path
6. Figure
G. Deliverables Acceptance
7. Figure