DRAPER & ASSOCIATES provided project management assistance to the Extended Enterprise Consortium for Integrated Collaborative Manufacturing Systems (EECOMS) beginning in October 1997, prior to the legal inception of the consortium. The Consortium consisted of several software manufactures and three universities and was projected to include two major industrial manufacturers. Consortium members were to work together to develop technologies that support the dynamic, secure integration of applications across manufacturing enterprise boundaries. By facilitating better supply chain planning and execution, the effectiveness of U.S. corporations would be increased. The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) funded this research and development effort. Overall, IBM, a member of the consortium, provided management. Draper & Associates worked for IBM as part of the EECOMS Project Office.

Draper & Associates was engaged for the EECOMS project as a result of the firm's efforts with IBM on a similar project, CIIMPLEX, the Consortium for Intelligent Integrated Manufacturing Planning and Execution. The only significant difference in Draper & Associates' work effort between the two projects was during the initial phase of each. Draper & Associates' initial role was to develop an Overall Project Schedule for EECOMS based on information in the original proposal to NIST. This Schedule aided the Corsortium members in developing their statements of work (SOW). Draper developed the next version of the Overall Project Schedule from this detailed SOW. Because of the uncertain nature of any research and development project, the Schedule detail was far greater for the current version than planned subsequent versions. Generally, each version involved a year's worth of activity; consequently, there was time overlap of the various versions. The detailed schedules for each version were the basis for maintaining schedule control of the project.

Because of concerns raised relative to cost management on the CIIMPLEX project, Draper & Associates collected data from all project participants to ensure the resources required to complete each task on the detailed schedules for each version were captured. Once again, as with the CIIMPLEX project, schedules were then revised to include only those planned activities that could be adequately resourced. These resources were compared against the SOW budget to assess its validity.

Project office update meetings were held bi-weekly to ensure schedule commitments were maintained. The basis for these meetings was the Near Term Schedule, the day-to-day implementation schedule developed from the detailed schedule for each version. Additionally, issue identification and tracking were accomplished using a Lotus Notes database.

In addition to these meetings, quarterly executive management committee meetings were held whereby the voting membership of the consortium was appraised of schedule status. The detailed schedule for each version was used for this meeting.

Lastly, Draper & Associates was asked to provide the bulk of information for the quarterly reports contractually required by the NIST government grant for this work.