Project Concept: The Custom Woodworking Company - Essay Example

? Project Concept: The Custom Woodworking Company Project Concept: The Custom Woodworking Company The Custom WoodworkingCompany is a small-to-medium sized company which deals in furniture and sub-contract works supplying and installing counter-tops, cabinets and other fixtures. The company has its head office and a spacious plant site at Industrial Estates, Someplace, BC. In the year 1989, the company decided to expand, and a project named ‘Project Woody 2000’ was initiated (Project management case study). It becomes evident from the case study that the project was not well conceived. First of all, the project went wrong from the initiation phase itself. In fact, in the initiation phase, the idea for the project is to be ‘fully explored and elaborated’ (Baars, 2006, p. 3). In addition, a proper decision regarding the purpose of the project, the parties to be involved, and the base of support to be provided should all be decided. Evidently, the initiation phase had to answer such questions as the purpose of the project, the feasibility of the project, the people to be included in the project, what results are to be obtained, and the possible boundaries of the project. In other words, according to Heyworth (2002, p. 12), the project concept phase requires solid and clear decision-making process. For this purpose, first of all, a project priority list should be made with clearly defined goals of the project. In fact, there is a lack of this understanding of priority in the case of Woody 2000. For example, there is no project priority list. Instead the project is trying to achieve a number of goals at the same time. Firstly, there is the desire to expand the manufacturing process in order to harvest the benefits of the commercial construction in south-western BC. Secondly, the company wanted to solve the problem of falling production efficiency due to less manufacturing space. When the company develops the project concept, it is not clear as to which goal it is trying to get. One can see that this happened because of lack of coordinated leadership. To illustrate, the company management brought too many people to the concept phase, including Bruce Sharpe who wanted to expand business, Miles Faster who wants to increase production efficiency, John Carpenter who wants computer controlled automation, and Kim Cashman and Spencer Moneysworth who want to cut costs. As a result, what happened was a disjoined decision making. It happens because the people in the phase possessed various ideas about what the project should be. In order to solve the problem, it was necessary for the team to decide what has to be the priority. As a result of all of these, even when the project was approved, it lacked a specific definition as the project was trying to reach various outcomes at the same time. In other words, different members were concerned about different outcomes. In addition, one can see that the estimated cost is $17 million. However, Woody has decided to spend a maximum of $17 million. It is very evident that a project is likely to cost more than the roughly estimated cost. Thus, the decision to spend not more than the roughly estimated amount will cause financial troubles for the project The real objective of the project could have been to expand the manufacturing process in order benefit from the boom in construction. In order to achieve this objective, the company could adopt a number of different strategies. First of all, the company could start another manufacturing unit in a different place. As already seen in the case study, there was a property available at attractive price some fifteen miles away from the head office. It was possible for the company to develop a new production unit without disrupting the existing production unit. Another option for the company was to expand its existing production plant, and thus raise production capacity. However, the best possible solution at this point is to start a new production plant in the new profitable location with all modern facilities. This could be done without disrupting the existing production unit. All other problems like the lack of space and lack of modern equipments could be overcome after making this new plant fully functional. In addition, the renovation of President’s office should also be done separately. Also, these goals could be kept out of the plan so that the objective remains intact. In fact, these additional tasks only resulted in poor project concept. It is possible to measure the project’s success by measuring the degree to which the set objectives have been met. In this particular case, the success can also be measured by assessing whether the project achieved its goal. In the given case study, the goal is to expand the business and the objective is to increase the production unit size and capacity. As Margoluis and Salafsky (1998, p. 61) state, if it is seen that both goals and objectives are met, one can say that the project is successful. In fact, the renovation of the President and Executive Vice president’s office too was included in the project because there were too many decision-makers in the initiation phase. All of them had various ideas about the project. So, this point too got priority in the project. Evidently, it was not a good idea to include the same in the project. This led to lack of clarity in project objectives and strategies. Thus, it became impossible to measure the success of the project. In this case, a suitable project scope statement can be ‘this project will increase the production capacity of the company by 25%. This will be achieved by expanding the existing production unit space by 25% and installing all modern equipments. This will be done without much disruption to the existing production process. This will enable the company to meet the increased production needs’. In fact, it is necessary for any project to have a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to ensure that each element is given adequate attention and that all members of the team understand how all elements are interlinked. Work Breakdown Structure- Woody 2000 Expansion 25% additional space to be added to the existing production unit Renovation Renovation of the President and Executive Vice president’s office Modernization of the existing unit Installation of air-conditioning Dust-free paint and finishing shop Extra compressor capacity Semi-automatic woodworking production train New software and hardware References Baars, W. (2006). Project Management Handbook. Data Archiving and Networked Services. Retrieved from http://www.dans.knaw.nl/en/content/categorieen/publicaties/project-management-handbook Heyworth, F. (2002). A Book to Project Management. UK: Council of Europe. Margoluis, R & Salafsky, N. (1998). Measures of success: Designing, managing, and monitoring conservation and development projects.US: Island Press. Project management Case study. The Custom Woodworking Company- Woody 2000 Project. Retrieved from http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/woody2000/intro.htm Read More