SUBMITTED TO:

Sir Ali Hussain Farrukh

SUBMITTED BY:

Noor e Sehar ( BC-18-2312 )

COURSE TITLE:

“Operation Management”

ASSIGNMENT WORK

Department of Commerce & Finance

„Semester 7th

Government College University

Lahore, Pakistan

4th November, 2021

 “Project Management”
Case Study:

Brent Collver is the president and chief executive officer of Romet limited Company. He
prepares a team meeting for the Project Destiny (the name of their plant relocation project). The
chief executive had settled the architectural design for the new plan, also check out the total 14
activities that are necessary for this.

Brent decided to complete the project in sequence after finalizing the details about their leasing
for 75000 square foot plant on Timberlea building that required 4 weeks, that is probable their
initial of the activities. The sequence is started from the machine stop, assembly, paint line and
auxiliary equipment. Also Brent is concerned about completing the schedule on time without
increasing their budget.

The activities chart (PERT) to complete the plan relocation is given below – after architectural
design and plan layout completed.

Program Evaluation & Review Technique (PERT) Chart

14 14 28
4
B F 33
14 30 32 32 33 39 39 40
10
19 33 G I
4 14 J K
2 1 6 1
14 30 33 35 42 42 43
0 4 35 36 36
A4 D
16
w 17 33
0 4
4 12 34
14 30 30 43 43
C
8 E H O
6 14 16 4 0
39 43 43 43
14 30

30 42 43
42
L N
12 1
30 42 42 43

30 42
M
12
30 42
As they stated in the case study the making plan for the plant is started at April 27, 2018. On
December 31, 2018 their lease is going to expire and project shut down date is decided by Brent
December 21, 2018. So, according to this information the total time for this project is about 8
months and 6 days that is considered to be 32 weeks.

Further if we talk about the critical path (longest path) of activity chart/diagram, there are
actually 2 critical paths in this network diagram that is mentioned below.

ABELNO & ABEMNO paths are equals to 43 weeks that is the longest duration of all the paths.
The delay even in only one activity from all the activities that are on critical path, the entire
duration of the project would be extended. For activities that are not on critical path, if we delay
any activities time it doesn’t affect the total duration of the project. These activities are said to be
Total slack that is the amount of time a task can be delayed before the project finish date is
delayed. The total slack is actually the difference between early start and late start or the
difference between early finish and late finish must not be equals to zero. The slack for this
project is mentioned below.

Activities Estimated Early start Early Late Start Late Finish Total Slack
time (in Finish
weeks)
A 4 0 4 0 4 0
B 10 4 14 4 14 0
C 8 4 12 6 14 2
D 16 14 30 17 33 3
E 16 14 30 14 30 0
F 14 14 28 19 33 5
G 2 30 32 33 35 3
H 4 30 34 39 43 9
I 1 32 33 35 36 3
J 6 33 39 36 42 3
K 1 39 40 42 43 3
L 12 30 42 30 42 0
M 12 30 42 30 42 0
N 1 42 43 43 43 0
O 0 43 43 43 43 0
So, the slack for all the activities is mentioned above. The time duration for these activities can
be delayed before the project finish date is delayed but the 0s there, represents the Critical path
activities and any time duration in those activities can easily increase the total time of the project
completed.
 “The ABC of Critical Path Method”
Summary:

Critical Path Method (CPM) is an algorithm for planning, managing and analyzing the timing of
a project. The CPM is basically a step by step system that helps to identify critical and non-
critical tasks from projects’ start to completion and prevents temporary risks. The run-time
reserve for critical activities is 0. The requirements of the entire project will be "adjusted" if the
duration of these tasks changes. As a result, critical project management activities need extra
attention and risk identification in real time. If a segment of a task may be slowed down or
delayed for a period of time without affecting other tasks, the task is not critical. Tasks of a
critical value cannot be delayed throughout the project's implementation and are time-limited.

Further, the method for CPM is quite simple as the best way to show it is in terms of graph that
makes it easy to understand the complexity of all the activities in a job. First thing in CPM is that
every activity should be listed with a symbol or a letter that makes it easy to remember the
activity, also the predecessors of every activity and time required and all these things if arranged
in a sequence with technical order would be good in avoiding errors. The graph must have
arrows to identify the start and finish of the project and those arrows will then connected to circle
in which the activity is mentioned. To reduce the time duration of the project crashing the
activities is the good solution.

The example that is taken is about the project of building a house that has 22 unique paths from
starts to finish. The contractor wants to finish this project in less than 34 days and that can be
possible through crashing that is used in CPM i.e. reducing the number of days from 4 to 2 by
assigning more carpenters. Although this increases the cost but it can be managed by PERT
(Program evaluation and review technique). The way to calculate the algorithm of CPM is as
follow.

 In the initial activity the Early start (ES) = 0

 The time required for the activity adds in the ES (ES+T) will generates the Early Finish
(EF) on the right side.
 After that all the activities’ ES will get from their immediate predecessor’s early finish
value whichever is bigger, ES = larger EF
 This process continuous until finish has been reached.
 For Late finish, we starts from the last activity of the project LF-T = LS
 After that all the activities’ LF will get from the immediate successors’ late start value
whichever is smaller, LF = smallest LS
 Total slack = ES – LS, it is the maximum amount of time an activity can be delayed.
 If the ES – LS = 0, then it is said to a critical activity and all the activities with 0 slack is
on critical path.
  If Total slack = 0 or ES = LS, then delay in this can cause a delay in the whole project as
it is a critical task.

If the contractor wants to minimize the total days of the project completion, he must trade of f
between cost and time. The purpose of a time-cost trade-off analysis is to minimize the initial
project length, as estimated by a critical path analysis, in order to fulfill a certain deadline for the
least amount of money.

Furthermore, it is important for carpenter to complete the project within a particular time frame
to recover early delays, avoid liquidated damages, free key resources early for other projects,
receive an early completion-bonus, improve the project cash flow. In general, there is a trade-off
between the amount of time it takes to accomplish an activity and the direct cost of doing so, the
less costly the resources are, the longer it takes to complete an activity. Shortening an activity's
time will usually raise its direct cost, which includes labor, equipment, and material. Never
assume that the number of resources provided and the length of the task are inversely linked. As
in this example, the contractor wants to add more carpenters to reduce the time from 4 to 2 days
that definitely increase the cost for him that is called crashing duration to him.

In the new development CPM and PERT plays a huge role and the most recent version was
PERT/COST. PERT/Cost calculates a mean cost for each task based on three estimations of the
cost of each activity. The sum of all activity mean costs, not only those on the critical route,
becomes the mean total project cost. There are further some more schedule defined that are
SPAR (Scheduling -Program for allocating resources), RAMPS (Resource allocation and multi-
project scheduling).