Scheduling and Project Management on the Various Departments of Walmart - Assignment Example

Scheduling and Project Management (PERT and CPM SLP) Introduction In an organizational culture, the consideration that is usuallyaccorded to project management is that in which it is applied to ease the relational considerations among numerous departments of an organization. As an essential characteristic, project management has often allowed for the reflection of the organizational cultures and strategies that can be applied towards the facilitation of the completion of projects. For example, for an organization to significantly record increases in the volume of incoming projects and meet their intended goals, the use of project management in the respective departments would be very crucial to the attainment of the same goals. Typically, projects are part of organizations and their accomplishments largely depend on the organizational structure, style of management, culture and systems applied towards the same (Vanhoucke, 2012). In this paper, the analysis shall be based on the effects that project management has on the various departments of Wal-Mart, being that it is an organization of choice in this particular study. There are numerous divisions in the organization that varies from Finance, Marketing, Human Resources Management, Production, and Accounting among others. In a broader scale, most organizations have been known to have opted to adopt the benchmarking practices used in the production as being applied by Wal-Mart. How project management affects the departments of Wal-Mart The core aspect for the understanding of Wal-Mart Inc.’s application of project management is in relation to its own benchmarking practices that are widely used to define the prospects for a project in the respective department. Currently, based on the large operational base covered by the company in its distribution of its products to different markets would indicate that any changes that might be applied to a particular department would need to be done in line with the benchmarking techniques put in place; hence, an indication of huge undertakings for the project managers in the respective departments. Therefore, every project manager in each of the departments are required clearly to define their goals and make sure that the end results for the respective projects are in line with the organization’s requirements for business. Subsequently, project management has enhanced the process orientation in the various departments by ensuring that there are good project processes put in place and that all the workers in the various departments sufficiently follow the process. Process orientation is a major factor in the determination of the overall success of an organization given that through it, should Wal-Mart choose to follow on a good and scalable process of managing its projects, it would be able to consistently attain success in all its projects. Project management application within the various departments of the company allows for its systematic business management approach thus, enhancing its understanding of the issues or problems existent in its production process and the appropriate measures that can be used towards the rectification of the same. Additionally, project management as used by the organization has enabled it to establish the performance measures for its projects through the use of analytical and scientific management tools (Pinto & Venkataraman, 2013). With this, the organization has been able to develop efficient and effective solutions to the wide form of problems that bedevil its operations. Ultimately, basing upon a careful evaluation of the various functions that each department at Wal-Mart plays, it is noted that even with the existence of ambiguities in project management, there is an observed inter-relationship between the functions of the various departments and the respective project variables that are applied towards the achievement of the projects. For instance, in the human resource department, project management would allow for the use of an organizational chart in the determination of subjective involvement of the personnel in the projects. According to Vanhoucke (2012), in the marketing department, project management enhances the understanding of the needs of the company’s various customers’ tastes and preferences in regard to the products produced. Usually customers create demand for a particular product whose satisfaction requires that the company delivers the right products or services and at the intended quality, quantity and time. This implies that the production/operations department adopts techniques of project management in its process. The finance department crowns this whole chain by tapping in the funds required to produce and market the products to the customers. Finally, the management of the workforce in these departments that fall under the human resource department requires that expertise be employed in the management and addressing of the issues mentioned in the previous departments. Difficulties or limitations of implementing PERT and CPM PERT and CPM project management techniques are great tools that have been widely adopted for use by most organizations. However, the application of these techniques is dependent on the type of industry that the organization operates within (Vanhoucke, 2012). For the case of Wal-Mart, it is a goods industry hence it has had challenges in the application of these techniques given that they do not model with its production variables. The difficulty experienced by the organization in the implementation of PERT relates to the fact that Wal-Mart Inc. is a product industry and would find it hard to implement a model such as PERT. This is because PERT is commonly suited for service industries to which Wal-Mart is not amongst. Subsequently, service industry is commonly characterized by numerous activities or projects that take off at short intervals while in Wal-Mart; most of the projects that take off are in relation to the primary production of goods hence, has got little need for PERT. CPM, on the other hand, aids in the determination of the customer relationships within an organization, considering that it largely entails the study of an organization’s customer behaviors and relationships. However, in the case of Wal-Mart, this seems not to be the case given that the company processes huge amounts information from diverse groups of customers on a daily basis. It has a huge database of consumers that renders it extremely hard to maintain such a system. Additionally, the use of the CPM technique may make project managers to put too much emphasis on the activities that are found within the critical path thus, only being able to primarily focus on the time aspects of the activities and forgetting other equally significant aspects such as the cost and quality controls for the goods produced. The extensive focus on the critical path is not essential, in light of the fact that, project managers will be unable to identify the production changes or improvements that take place in other sections or departments of the organization (Kerzner, 2013). References Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pinto, J. K., & Venkataraman, R. R. (2013). Cost and value management in projects. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Vanhoucke, M. (2012). Project Management with Dynamic Scheduling: Baseline Scheduling, Risk Analysis and Project Control. Berlin: Springer Berlin. Read More