Conveyor Belt Project Part 3

BA562 Conveyor Belt Project Part 3 Part A

1. Which if any of the resources are over allocated? Design, Development and Documentation.

2. Assume that the project is time constrained and try to resolve any over allocation problems by leveling within slack. What happens? The design and documentation over allocated problem is solved. However, Development is still over allocated. (See Gantt chart 3. 1)

3. What is the impact of leveling within slack on the sensitivity of the network? Include a Gantt chart with the schedule table after leveling within slack. The sensitivity of the network is increased. The slacks are reduced which lead to a loss of flexibility. The probability of activities delaying the project is increased because the reduction of slack creates more critical activities and critical paths. As in the Gantt chart 3. 1, there are more critical activities (marked on red).

4. Assume the project is resource constrained and resolve any over allocation problems by leveling outside of slack. What happens? What are the managerial implications? Resource constrained means that the project has limited resource but the time is flexible.

Using leveling outside of slack, the over allocation problems are resolved. However, the length of the project is 675 days, which is greatly increased by 145 days, and the new end date is now 8/17/2012. The managerial implication may be the delay of the next project that uses the same resource. The critical path is changed, the cost may be increased. For example, task 4. 2 must wait until the task 2. 3 is finished due to the resource constrain, and the idle resource may cause money.

5. What options are available at this point in time?

Include a Gantt chart with the schedule table after leveling. One option is fast-tracking. The manager can try to rearrange the logic of the network so the critical activities can be done in parallel rather than sequentially. Another option is that the manager can figure out whether there is a way to accelerate the activities so that reduce the length of the project. The manager can also check with the customer or project sponsors to see if it’s acceptable to reduce the scope of the project. The reduction can reduce the cost and resource. Compromising the quality is also an option.

If quality is sacrificed, it may be possible to reduce the time of an activity on the critical path. However, it is rarely acceptable or used. Part B Once you have obtained a schedule that meets the time and resource constraints, prepare a memo that addresses the following questions: 1. What changes did you make and why? The end date of the project cannot be moved, so the project should be considered as a time constrain project. Two internal research teams are assigned to Development initially, but Development over allocation still exists.

In the resource graph, we can see that the peak of demand in Development is 500%, which means we need to hire 1 more development team outside the company. The peak demand is consisted by 5 tasks: 1. 2 “Hardware design”, 2. 2. 1 “Disk drivers”, 2. 3 “Memory management”, 3. 2 “Routine utilities” and 3. 3 “Complex utilities”. Among these tasks, 3. 2 “Routine utilities” has the shortest duration. Since the cost for outside development team is higher, we should hire it for as short duration as possible. Thus the external development team is assigned to the task 3. 2 “Routine utilities”.

2. How long will the project take? The project length remains 530 days and will be end on Feb. 2nd, 2012. 3. How did these changes affect the sensitivity of the network? These changes didn’t create more critical activities because the resource requirements are all satisfied. From the Gantt chart we can see the critical path of the project is not changed. The sensitivity of the network is a little bit higher since task 2. 4 has been moved to a later start time and the slack of task 2. 4 is reduced. Part 4 Based on the file created at the end of Part 3, prepare a memo that addresses thefollowing questions:

1.How much will the project cost? The cost will be $1,051,200. 00.

2. What does the cash flow statement tell you about how costs are distributed over the life p of the project? In the first two quarters of 2010, especially the second quarter, the cost is much higher than other period during the project. This is because there are several tasks are working in parallel. In my opinion, in this case, the cost is related to the tasks, the more tasks are working, the higher the cost it would be. So the total cost of the project increases greatly at first half year of 2010 and then the increase rate slows down.