Case Study: UPD Manufacturing

Describe common practices to estimate the duration of project activities as well as real reasons that cause project delays.

We prefer the EOQ/ ROP system as gains from reducing the order/ production size (gains in terms of less value of inventory being produced) which though lead to increase in setup cost far outweigh the gains from Blanchard’s current system (gains in terms of reduction of setup cost) while, costs are that of the value of inventory being produced.

In almost every business, project management is critically important. The critical path method (CPM) will provide a timeline for the project manager for when tasks should be completed. In addition, providing a deadline and the negative effects it will have on the following successors if not completed on time. These many task are interdepended. Therefore, the CPM provides the start and finishes times of the tasks, and identifies the few tasks on the critical path that the project manager should observe to determine which task needs the most attention. Already discovering and incorporating the details the task or assignments may require, CPM calculates all task times, which can be measured in hours, days, weeks, and months. For any unintended manually input errors, a warning message will be provided. Including an automatic successor generator, task numbering comment, and data validation, makes it easier on the project manager.

One of the main concerns during the meeting was the impact of cost and time constraints on networking techniques and project schedules. Under the ideal situation, the project start and end dates are fixed. Adding resources is not usually feasible as it increases cost. There should be a balance between time and cost constraints as it avoids wasting of resources. Also most people are willing to accept that costs could exceed expectations, and might even take a perverse delight in recounting past examples, the same is not true for time constraints. This is probably due to the fact that cost over runs are resolved in-house, while schedule issues are open and visible to the customer. A company has a lot of useful, desirable work that could be done, but has limited and finite resources available with which to do that work. Choices have to be made about which work to do and how to allocate resources. This leads to constraints especially, the time constraint and the cost constraint. Time, in project management, is analyzed down to its smallest detail. Each and every component of the project is analyzed with respect to the time required for completion. After completion of this analysis these components are broken down even further into the time required to do each task.

Assist the project managers in meeting their project’s goals and deliver milestones within budget, time, and scope

1) Correct the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and Reorder point (ROP) quantities for each of the five items mentioned in the case.

In field of project management, there are a plethora of mechanisms under perpetual reevaluation. One specific segmentation of project management under such scrutiny pertains to cost duration, which is the time and monetary costs of completing individual tasks within the project’s critical path (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). The process of monitoring and evaluating the time and financial impacts of each task is referred to as cost duration analysis (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). A chief concern of cost duration analysis is identifying tasks within the project’s critical path which can reduce project duration (PMI, 2013). A common approach to reducing a project’s duration is task “crashing” (PMI, p.181). According to The Project Management Institute (2013) crashing refers to the process of methodical determining the financial value of increasing a critical path task’s resources in order to decrease project duration (p.181).

Correct the EOQ and ROP quantities for each of the five items mentioned in the case.

Since z= (Q-20,000)/5102 =0.52, so we get Q=20,000+0.52*5102=22,653. Thus, the quantity would be ordered under this policy is 22,653.

Project Time Management – an estimated time for the completion of each task and based on resources, the duration is determined.

We will submit weekly milestone reports directly to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The milestone repost for the project will base on information in the Gantt chart. An agenda for the project team meeting will develop to work through some of the challenges while facing in executing the project. Update the scope of the project while having some changes in the executing phase. We will develop detailed lists of assumptions and questions that all the project team has related to the new scope of the project.

A key activity in project management is assessing project constraints. A project has three limitations: scope, budget and schedule. These limitations are project constraints because they are sensitive to change and have an impact on project risk. Risk is exposure to uncertain outcomes. Project constraints are mutually exclusive. If one constraint changes it affects the others and adjustments may be required to compensate and manage risks. For example, a delay in the schedule can increase the risk that the project will not finish on time. Time is money and delays have a negative impact on the budget. To

Proper following and acknowledgement of the timeline is vital to the success of this project. If the project goes overtime, it can cause serious budget mess-ups and furthermore delays.

It will also detail what milestones must be met to be able to successfully coordinate effort within the project timeline and meet the inauguration date as planned, without the milling of any other milestones nor the compromising of any nor all deliverables. Finally, it ensures the appropriate risk mitigation is in place to meet the final deliverables and the timeline requirements within every project phase.

Hence, proper time management is crucial in meeting the deadlines of the projects. As a team, we agreed upon realistic deadlines for all distributed tasks as it helped us complete projects in timely manner.