Project Scheduling Modeling - Assignment Example

Project Scheduling Modeling Project Scheduling Projects that end up taking excess time as compared to the initial plan are endemicall over the world. These projects run over budgets leading to unnecessary strains in businesses. Upscaling of highway interchanges, construction of novel wholesale stores, boring of deepwater wells – all are inundated by a seeming failure to achieve the forecasted time schedule every so often. It is almost a cliché that any huge project will fail to achieve its intended deadline and cost more than planned (Lawrence & Pasternack, 2002). Businesses ought to employ project scheduling to avoid unnecessary forestalling and excess costs when running projects as it helps to plan and control projects with increased efficiency. Below, I discuss the relevance of project scheduling modeling the showing its importance in the business environment today and future prospects. Project scheduling is important for in the efficient planning and management of the project. Businesses that apply project scheduling in knowing a schedule of earliest and most recent commencement and termination times for every activity that they undertake, and that makes them complete projects in the earliest possible time. Other objectives of project scheduling include: calculating the possibility that the project will end within the intended time, finding the least possible cost schedule that will enable the completion of a project, assessing the impact of delays to particular activities as well as the whole project, observing a project to determine if it is proceeding within the stipulated time and cost schedule, and finding a host of activities that will cause the allocation of resources during the time of the project to be flawless (Lawrence & Pasternack, 2002). Over the years, scholars in business have devised various project scheduling techniques that ca assist entities accomplish the above stated objectives. Approaches such as the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM). These techniques were both designed in the mid fifties, and they use project networks to aid in scheduling the activities of the project. As learned earlier in the course, project networks are flow charts or graphs that depict the order in which the terminal elements of the project are to be done by highlighting the terminal elements as well as their dependencies. Although there has been a blurring distinction between the two techniques over the recent years, PERT stands an approach that takes the completion time of the project’s activities as random variables with particular probability distribution, while CPM treats the completion time of the project’s action as exclusively dependent on the total money spent to bring the activity to completion. The two approaches need the modeler to recognize a project’s activities and precedence association. This pertains highlighting a set of direct predecessors for every activity. Direct predecessors to an activity are the jobs that a business must undertake just before the commencement of the activity (Lawrence & Pasternack, 2002). Application To demonstrate the concept of project scheduling, let us consider the situation faced by AC Inc. AC Inc. is a fully-fledged major airplane company in the global market. The company relies on a gate management software that is user friendly at all its airport hubs to decide how to channel aircrafts to airport gates. Judging from the business criteria and flight schedule, the system serves gate long term and short term gate requirements planning. It also offers the services of real time allocation of the airport’s gates in the course of operation day. The airline faces the challenge of swapping the system that is in place due to the obsoleteness of its hardware – the hardware is now unsupported. Further, a significant increase of the airport’s activities at its hubs is making the system that is in place unsuitable. AC Inc. is concerned with the general cost needed if a manual process would have to take precedence in the event of a malfunction of the existing system. Thus, the company has set up a project with a mandate to obtain and implement a novel system for managing its gates to take over the current system. AC Inc. has had a project manager, Soad El-Taji, for some time, and she has extensive the company called her once again to take the job of steering them through the system upgrade within an intended time with unanimity. Just like before, Soad decided to employ PERT/CPM techniques. She started by developing an activity list. Table 1: Activity list for the airline gate management system project Activity Description Direct predecessors Time estimated A Come up with the acquisition team for the project Two weeks B List the software requirements A Two weeks C Develop a grid for evaluating the contractor B One week D Choose potential contractors A One week E Develop and present a request for proposal to probable contractors B,D Four weeks F Audit contestant, select the best, negotiate, and make an agreement with the chosen contractor C,E Two weeks G Make preparations for the definition of functional specifications F Five weeks H Make a software analysis plan G Two weeks I Software customization – stage one G Two weeks J Buy and install required hardware G Two weeks K Test the release for the first time H,I,J One week L Come up with a training plan for main users K One week O Train main users L,N One week M Software customization – stage two K Six weeks N Put the second stage to test M One week P Customize the software – third stage N Three weeks Q Test the final software P Two weeks R Deploy the software and sign off the project Q Four weeks Table 1: PERT One suitable way to to determine the critical activities and duration of a minimal project network is through the list all the numerous paths in the linkage. The length of the path equals the time the path activities require. The longest path in terms of time in any network is the critical path and the corresponding activities known as critical activities in that that the project manager must complete them as schedules in order to attain the project time that is scheduled for the project. The estimated time of the project is thus given by the span of the critical path. It is likely to have more than one critical path in a given network project. Nonetheless, all the critical paths must have the same span. The critical path for the Airport’s gate management system shown in table 1 is A-B-E-F-G-I-K-M-N-P-Q-R as shown in the below figure. All the activities in the named path are essential or critical (Vanhoucke, 2012). Figure 1: CPM Future developments Project scheduling is so common in today’s business environment that innovators are seeking new ways to use the PERT/CPM concepts to improve forecasting of projects. These innovations will help in mitigating the bottlenecks that PERT analysis encounters in practice. The underlying supposition that the duration of activities are autonomous is sometimes hard to justify. Additionally, the duration of activities may not proceed in the beta distribution. Simulation is one of the methods that will change future applications of PERT, especially if additional distribution functions are involved. Further, the application of software for project scheduling is increasing. Current applications used in project scheduling are Microsoft Project, Artemis, and Primavera. Microsoft Project stands as the most applied project scheduling software in the market (Vanhoucke, 2012). Novel software and micro applications in project scheduling will make project planning and management easier, more accurate, and save ventures a lot in terms of time and monetary resources. Conclusion It is clear that projects require proper planning and management in order to avoid exceeding the intended time, which is already a general phenomenon world over. Project scheduling is the answer to this deeply rooted problem that is highly costly to businesses. Project scheduling methods such as PERT and CPM can help projects be able to deliver in time without spending so a lot of resources. Current application of project scheduling methods takes both PERT and CPM employing them together to ensure that projects are completed within the set targets. In the future, the practice of simulation and introduction of novel and robust software will increase the prospects of completing projects, even those that involve additional or multiple functions. Project managers aiming to save resources of their contractors ought to sharpen their skills. References Lawrence, J. A., & Pasternack, B. A. (2002). Applied Management Science: Modeling, Spreadsheet Analysis, and Communication for Decision Making. Wiley. Vanhoucke, M. (2012). Project Management with Dynamic Scheduling: Baseline Scheduling, Risk Analysis and Project Control. Springer. Read More