Acme New Facitlity Assessment Answers
a). In your role as the Project Manager for the implementation of Acme’s new facility,you are required to describe the main principles of the project management process
as they can be linked to the project lifecycle. You will do this in diagram form(making use of a model diagram as given in class) showing how your project fits into that model. (LO1.1)
b). Suggest suitable success / failure criteria for your new project and, in doing this,you consider both process and outcome criteria as well as internal factors and the
requirements of Acme Products themselves as the owner of the project.
c). Project management is concerned with several objectives at the same time and these typically come under the headings of time, cost and quality. Explain, with
examples linked to each of these objectives, how project management systems and processes are designed to contribute to each of these objectives in the case of the
Acme Project.
d) Explain how you will terminate the Acme Project, making sure that your explanation includes the key elements you will be assessing as well as the items you will include in your post-project appraisal.
Task 2
a) List the main participants in the Acme Project giving an explanation of the roles and responsibilities of each of the participants included on your list.
b) Draw up and explain a suitable organisational structure for the Acme Project. (It is essential that you include a diagram.)
c) Identify and justify the skills and qualities you should possess as a leader for the Acme Project.The City College HND in Business – Project Management for Business – September 2015
d) Specify the human resource requirements for the Acme Project then explain and justify the technical and personal characteristics you require of the people you
intend to include in your Project Team.
e) Develop, in diagram form, an outline work breakdown structure of no more than three levels for the Acme Project.
Task 3
a) Using the following list of tasks, draw up a network diagram and find the critical path for the project below. What is the final duration of the project?
b) In the project described by the network in Task 3a, you are notified that the construction of the production machinery will take longer than planned by eight
weeks. You must inform your client of any consequence of this delay: what do you say? You are then informed by your supplier that your supply of raw materials has
been affected by flooding and that you will not be able to start sourcing until 6 weeks later than planned. What is the effect of this delay and what might you do
about it?
c) Explain, with your own examples. How a Gantt Chart and a Resource Histogram might be used in order to improve the management of your project.
c) Explain how you might be able to Crash some activities during your project in order to finish the project more quickly.
d) Explain how you will analyse Cost and Time performance for your project during its project life.
e) Explain how you will manage any changes that are likely to be required during the life of your project.
f) When and how will you close the project? What happens to the building and production line once you have completed your tasks as project manager?
g) Explain how you will evaluate the completed project i.e. how will you decide if it has it been a success or a failure? You should also include methods of measuring the performance of a project as they will apply to the Acme Project
Answers:
Introduction
The ACME Products Plc has a wide variety of customer database starting from production to logistics. Now the organization has decided to plant a new production facility to meet the increasing demand for their products in the market. Hence, the Board of Directors of the decision making bodies for the organization have released this project to present a view of the design of the project by applying principles of project management and evaluate the success or failure criteria of the project.
This report focuses on the various principles of project management that can be applied to the success or failure criteria measurement of a project. The term project management denotes to the discipline comprising of initiation, prepare planning, execution, controlling and closeout of the activities of the project team to acquire certain goals and meet specific success criteria.
Task 1: Understanding of Project Management Principles
1.1 Description of Project Background and Principles of Project at ACME Product PLC
1.1.1 Background of the Project for ACME Product PLC
The main objective of the project is to design a new manufacturing facility for a business organization named ACME Products Plc that deals with the manufacturing and production of plastic tableware. The project will also include the construction of a new building, installation of production machinery, handling the supply of raw material and manufacturing as well as delivery of the finished products. The project will also focus on the arrangement for production in the new facility and integration of that with the existing factories in other parts of the country. The project will be designed with the help of project management fundamentals that will deliver to evaluate the success or failure of the project.
1.1.2 Key Principles of the Project Management at ACME Product PLC
There are sure standards, which should have to be taken after when taking care of activities. According to Botchkarev and Finnigan (2015), outlined that there are seven basic principles within a project management process.
Success - While undertaking of this ACME Project, the focus was dependable for the achievement of the project. The success should be considered with maintaining all principles in ACME Product PLC project.
Commitment - The administration and the colleagues must be focused on the task before it comes enthusiastically. This implies there must be an agreement on the objectives, scope, quality, timeline and the expense of the task between everybody.
Trade-off Triangle - This rule just implies that degree, quality, time, and cost must be feasible and they should exist in an adjusted state for a task to make it is encouraging (Clements and Gido 2012). Any of these variables cannot be changed without influencing the others.
Communication Channels - A solitary channel of correspondence must exist between the project support and the task group pioneer for all choices influencing the result of the undertaking.
Cultural Environment - The system for administration must match the sort of task and the present status of the project so that the group can deliver its best of yield. The group must be overseen in a way that empowers and supports them.
Process - For any undertaking to succeed, methodology and approaches must be unmistakably said and should be archived. It ought to express the parts; obligations and appointments must be incorporated into strategies. These procedures serve as aides all through the lifespan of the project.
(Source: Randolph 2012, pp- 81)
Project Lifecycle - This standard includes the arranging and the execution periods of the undertaking. On a very basic level, arranging precedes usage. This guarantees a straightforward way and decides critical turning points in the commitment (Cooke and Tate 2011). By taking after this, we can get a reasonable picture on determining when the task begins and when it ought to end.
1.2 Evaluation of Success/Failure Criteria for the Project
These are the useful components and highlight that, when finished, make up the completing deliverable for the undertaking. Assets here are the expense and the financial backing designated the particular project to be finished. The ACME Product PLC should consider in this criteria about the Key Performance Indicators for making the success identified under the project. The success factors are selected with more specific strategies of Post Performance Review reports, project assessment and evaluation accounting the indicators as well. The commitment of success should be considered as stakeholder satisfaction, their responsibility objectives, and timely delivery of by-products, expense utilization, and quality of performance. In this project, the three factors as quantity, time, and cost balanced in aspect of completion and suitable adjustments in every aspect. In ACME Product PLC, there must be suitable channels and sessions for communication and necessary interaction process as in discussion, face-to-face interaction, essential information sharing, and others. The timetable alludes to the exact time required and distributed to create a deliverable (Dalcher 2013). In this situation of the ACME Project, this would be the consequence of the undertaking.
At the point when all these criteria will be met in the ACME Project, the achievement rate of the project will be fulfilled. If the asset and time are more utilized than the allotted sum and if the extent of the project is not achieved, it will bring about the task to meet disappointment.
1.3 Explanation of the Principles of Systems and Procedures of Project Management
The idea of overseeing development projects is profoundly implanted in the conventional building acquirement framework. Frame (2014) contends that time, expense and quality are the attainable primary goals of the customer in any development project. In spite of the fact that it is guaranteed that time, expense and quality are fused in the administration of development projects, research has demonstrated that in truth a period cost predisposition exists.
Time: By the ACME Project it can be stated that a restrained administration exertion is expected to finish a development project on time, and this coordinated administration attempt will control both expenses also, quality (Dinsmore and Cabanis 2011).
Cost: Customers have been progressively concerned with the general productivity of activities and the responsibility of undertakings for the most part. Therefore, a toll has been taken in the ACME Project for the relationship with undertaking delays, are much of the time recognized as one of the foremost components prompting the high cost of development.
Quality: To the customer, quality might be characterized as one of the segments that add to esteem for money. The joining of all capacities and forms inside of the ACME Project is kept in mind with the end goal to accomplish the perpetual change of the quality of products and administrations.
1.4 Explanation of Key elements involved in Project Termination and Post-Project Appraisals
There are eight essential elements according to the Post-Project Appraisal that should be used to assess and explain the termination of the ACME Project (Gido and Clements 2012). The features that are included in the Post-Project Appraisal can be discussed as below:
Overall Project Assessment: The project was carried out successfully to meet the goals and objectives that were expected to achieve with the help of this project. In context to the ACME Project, it can be said that the manufacturing facility was built according to the specifications required by the organization and taking into account the integration of production with existing factories in other parts of the country (Heagney 2012).
Scope Management: The ACME Project delivered all the range that was agreed to be accomplished during the planning of the project. There was documentation of the change request and approval by Board of Directors in ACME Products Plc organization (Holzmann 2013). The time and cost were adjusted as per the change in the scope variables defined for the project.
Key Accomplishment: The team members involved in the project were very productive and actively participated for the conduction of this project. Various efficient ways of equipment usage were adapted for the accomplishment of the project. The project team dealt with the problems during the building phase of the manufacturing facility and the installation of the product machinery (Scally 2013).
Lessons Learned: The problems that were faced by the ACME project team mainly consisted of the team collaboration and upkeep the regular updates on the progress of the project. Therefore, to prevent such problems of team collaboration shortly the project manager must include the use of certain tools online to note the daily progress of the project and update regarding any conflict between the team members (Huemann 2013).
Project Sign-off: The stakeholders were satisfied with the quality of the results that were delivered on completion of the project. Now, the project signoff should be included for terminating the venture within suitable timeline. The stakeholders should be signed off as well with considering their individual efforts in this matter. Signing off includes the detachment of them out of the project at the time of project completion.
Opportunities for Improvements: The planning phase was designed to assess the risks and how the risks can be mitigated for the successful accomplishment of the project. The roles and responsibilities of the Project team members were defined before the development of the project planning.
Future Consideration – The actions were taken into considerations for the mitigation of the risks involved in the project for successful accomplishment in the estimated timeline and budget of the project.
Adoption of Best Practices – The project management tools such as the Gantt chart and Resource allocation tables were used for the proper management of resources to manage the cost of the project within the estimated budget (Hughes 2012).
Task 2: Management of Project’s Human Resources at ACME Product PLC
2.1 Roles and Responsibilities of Participants within the Project
There are disorder and distortion of the fragments of a percentage of the experts in the administration of Construction tasks. This could be credited to numerous components. One of the variables is the absence of legitimate working learning on the larger part of individuals as to the parts of every expert in the business (Turner 2012).
Project Manager - While the obligation regarding agreeing to details is immovably set with the contractual worker, the implicit supposition is made that unless a customer keeps up his particular agent or project manager on the site to watch and review the works, the resultant structure or building won't be incongruity with determined quality standard (Hydari 2013). In any case, the size, sort and many-sided quality of a specific building task might make it important to have notwithstanding the venture supervisor, an inhabitant manufacturer, occupant engineers and an inhabitant designer (Wbdg.org 2016).
Contractor - Contractor was taking so as to do building improvement process by taking charge of the exercises on a building development site in deciphering outlines, working drawings, calendars and particulars into a physical structure.
Civil Engineer – Architect or civil engineer will deliver drawings details, plans and other applicable information that might be required for the general configuration of the task to help the amount surveyor in the readiness of bills of costs. The costing and the customer in his appraisal of the suitability of the venture, with respect to statutory prerequisites (Hällgren 2012).
Surveyor - Surveyor is the overseer of area data. The size, geology, area, highlights on and underneath the field after that any advancement is manufactured, is resolved first by surveyors.
Quality Surveyor - A quality engineer ought to be called upon in the early phases of an interview by the customer in light of his ability to development costs.
2.3 Identification and Justification of Skills & Qualities as a Project Manager
In terms of developing of ACME based big and complicated project, there are some skill and qualities are required for selection of project manager. Some of them are listed below –
The project manager who is equipped for reviewing materials and the workmanship of works must be an expert that is all around prepared in building development, and with preparing in undertaking administration (Ika 2015).
While the project development engineer will assess those materials, and segments indicated by the venture planner furthermore check measurements physically on the construction site.
The temporary worker ought to as a rule participate with the manager and regard him as the senior individual from the undertaking group whose help and exhortation will make remarkable venture execution (Wells and Kloppenborg 2015).
2.4 Explanation and Justification of required Technical and personal characteristics in Project
2.4.1 Project manager technical requirement and personal characteristics -
Bachelor's or Master's degree in structural designing from a certify fourâ€year school or college and a base 15 years’ experience on civil works.
To perform this occupation effectively, an individual must have the capacity to perform every vital obligation attractively (Indelicato 2013).
2.4.2 Contractor technical requirement and personal characteristics -
A decent degree or certificate in structural building is exceptionally valuable, and long involvement in development is extremely fundamental.
A solid money related foundation is critical to be into development business whether as a Contractor.
2.4.3 Civil engineer requirement and personal characteristics -
Forthcoming structural specialists must finish a four-year certification, which more often than not takes around four years (Joslin and Müller 2015).
Development building is an expert teach that arrangements with the outlining, arranging, development, and administration of frameworks.
2.4.4 Surveyor requirement and personal characteristics-
The Surveyor must be Diploma in Civil Engineering with two years relevant experience in civil construction work.
Surveyors do a scope of activities to strengthen sanctioned surveyors, designers, and engineers.
2.4.5 Quality Surveyor requirement and personal characteristics –
The Quality Surveyor has Diploma in civil engineering and five years experience in quality surveying for civil construction (Levin 2013).
2.5 Work Breakdown Structure
(Source: Created by Author in MS Visio)
Task 3: Application of Project Processes and Procedures
3.1 Design of Network Diagram, Findings of Critical Path and Final Duration of Project
3.1.1 Design of Network Diagram of ACME Production Facility project
(Source: Created By Author in MS Project)
3.1.2 Identification of Critical Path in ACME Production Facility project
(Source: Created By Author in MS Project)
3.1.3 Final Duration
The project will take around 329 days for accomplishment as assumed to start from 23/01/2016 and will complete on 28/04/2017.
3.2 Delay in the Project: Consequences
The report discusses in this section about the delay in the ACME project. The project is structured for completion within eight weeks time. However, there are certain causes for that the project has the tendency of delay generated in the project. The project delay and their consequences are demonstrated here (Martinsuo 2013).
Consequence 1: More cost and budget requirements
The first and foremost consequence in this scenario is the cost and budget requirements. The delay may be due to a late supply of material in the project.Therefore, the alternative supplier may take extra charges for the urgent delivery of materials.
Consequence 2: Change in project schedule
The project manager is bound to change the project schedule in this changed context. Therefore, the length of the critical path will be longer. The critical path may help the project manager to incorporate the changes, however; the consequence will be to manage the criticality of ACME project (Mastrofini 2013).
Consequence 3: Change of roles and responsibilities
The project manager will have to change and revise the roles and responsibilities of certain project members to reconsider the revised timeline. The project manager has the major role for revising the roles in this project.
Flooding in materials and effect of delay
In a case of flooding of raw materials, the supplier should be instantly replaced with the alternative supplier in the project. The new supplier should provide the materials according to the required specifications, and management decisions. There may be little fringe in time scheduling. However, the project manager will need to revise the time scheduling to consider the alternative resource (Mir and Pinnington 2014). The materials should require testing for effectiveness and the altered completion timeline is required for Gantt chart revision.
3.2 Explanation of the use of Gantt chart and Resource Histogram for Project Management Improvement
The Gantt chart is an elementary part of any project whether the project being small or large; the Gantt chart is the basic requirement of any project to handle the timeline and resource allocation. The histogram is another subsequent part of the project, and it manages the project progress along with resource allocation with separate time constraint and completion time (Randolph 2012). The Gantt chart shows clearly the segmented activities in a chart format with changing working schedule and resource effort calculation. The histogram analyzes the specific activity with proper resource allocation with individual time and progress under a particular period. Both of these resources are essential for handling the project delays and project rescheduling with critical path consideration. In the ACME project, these tools help the project manager to understand the activity priority with timely completion and generation of progress report with activity details.
3.3 Explanation of crashing some activities for Early Completion of Project
The early finish of any project may be performed with either two types of strategy. The first one may be fast tracking, and another one may be crashing some activities. In this scenario, the crashing of activity is discussed with ACME project changes. The crashing is performed for improper yet lengthy activities in the project as well the costly resource employment tasks. For instance, the activity of Design Production Machinery and Build Production Machinery may be included in the project as the single task. In such way, the time should be shortened to 18 weeks. Again, the design building activity and requirements specification tasks may be merged for completion within 12 weeks time. The advertising campaign activity may be performed within two weeks time. In this manner, the total timeline will be shrunk in a smaller schedule (Richman 2012).
3.4 Analysis of Cost and Time performance for the project
The cost and time performance may be measured by analysis Net Present Value and payback period analysis. The NPV analysis is essential to get a better view of present value acquisition in the project after the certain time. The NPV analysis may be performed with certain percentage of 6% rate with the discount factor of (1/1.06) yearly. Again, the payback period analysis determines the time in which the project will provide better revenues to the project employing organization (Richman and Richman 2011). In this context, ACME project should consider both of them to get project performance.
3.5 Change Management in the Project
The change management will be performed with better stakeholder communication process and planning. Within the project life cycle, the project manager should have to consider a major role of revising the roles and responsibilities within stakeholder meeting. The meeting will provide individual role and activity change specification; for instance, if a natural disaster occurs as a certain incident with losing resources, then the project manager will have to accommodate the project completion within time (Rmit.edu.au 2016). Otherwise, the project may require additional cost and budget to complete with more workforces in this context.
3.6 Project Closeout
Project closeout is simple with conducting a meeting with stakeholder sign-out and Post Performance Review meeting. In a case of completion of the building and production line, the stakeholders involved with the construction are signed out from the project. Then the project manager will be conducting PIR meeting for more modification and the completed project performance analysis (Roberts 2011).
3.7 Evaluation of the Completed Project
The assessment of the completed project is performed with PIR meeting with employment project organization. The methods of measuring the performance of a project are may be sure KPIs of the building, the NPV analysis, payback analysis, and ROI analysis. Mainly the PIR document has some factors of completion evaluation, construction evaluation criteria, and authority reviews (Sankaran 2015). Finally, the paper is signed with approval for successful completion of the project.
Conclusion
The project management study is carried out on the application of project management concepts for the preparation of a project for the ACME Products Plc organization to set up a new manufacturing facility and integration of the production in the new facility with the existing factories in other parts of the country. The feedbacks from the stakeholders regarding the outcome were in the positive manner as they were regularly updated about the progress of the project. The active participation of the team members assisted in completing the project within the estimated timeframe and cost.
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