Manufacture and Marketing of a New Computer - Essay Example

1. Introduction Computers are one of the electronic gadgets that are widely used nowadays. Each and every computer manufacturer aims to produce the optimal number of computers at the shortest time possible (Kanellas 1). Therefore, production of computers should be carefully planned to achieve this goal. 2. Documentation Manufacturing and marketing a computer includes major activities such as product benchmarking, establishing design, building prototype, manufacturing and testing the product, manual documentation and product marketing and sales. These activities are done based on the order that they should be carried out. The time period for each activity is estimated based on available data. A network model is established to show the relationship among the activities which will be useful in computing for the critical path. The critical path is computed by means of the Critical Path Method (CPM). CPM is important because it determines the critical and non critical activities which will be helpful in project planning and management (Hillier 417). As shown in Diagram 1, product benchmarking comes first because in order to come up with a good design, the company should first analyze the attributes of the existing computer products in the market. From the data that will be gathered, software and hardware design should be done next. Detailed drawing should be done after all the designs are made in order to set the appropriate dimensions and features of the computer that will be manufactured. Preparation of the prototype and marketing plan can be done at the same time because they deal on different aspects of the product and may not affect the performance of each other for the entire project duration. Lastly, technical manuals should only be done after testing the product to ensure that the manual will be correct and will be based on the product’s true function and attributes. The critical path is computed using forward and backward pass and the result is shown by the red line tracing the path A-C-D-E-F-H-K-L. The duration of the critical path determines the total duration of the entire project. Based on Table 1, the project will be completed in 270 working days. Therefore in order to complete the project on January 19, 2009, the project should be started on December 26, 2007. Working days exclude weekends and legal federal holidays. All the critical activities are shaded in Table 1. This means that these activities are the most important tasks in the project and therefore must be done on schedule. Non critical activities are designing software, developing marketing plan, training of sales representatives and advertising. They are considered non critical because they can be done in advance or can be delayed as long as it is within the limits of the schedule. To be able to finish the job in 270 days, critical activities should be done on schedule and should not be delayed. Only non critical activities can be delayed because delaying any critical activity will result to longer completion time and postponement of succeeding activities (Hillier 418). A non critical activity such as training sales representative may be delayed by few days as long as it can still meet its scheduled completion time. Aside from activity delays, lack of budget, workforce and technological failure affect the completion time of the project. If budget is not enough, appropriate materials for the hardware and circuit board might not be purchased on time causing hardware manufacturing to be postponed. Also, if workforce is not enough, activities might take longer time to be completed. Technological failure such as machine failure creates unsatisfactory outputs thus, forcing the company to fix the machine first before creating another batch. To further specify the activities, a work breakdown structure is used (Diagram 2). This is important because it helps to assure project managers that all work elements are identified. Moreover, it helps managers establish a basis of control and facilitate the evaluation of cost, time and technical performance at all levels in the organization over the life of the project (Gray and Larson 105). As shown in Diagram 2, the top box of the structure shows the final output which is a computer and under it are its seven major deliverables. These deliverables are then broken down to several activities which will be assigned to different departments. Prior to assigning tasks, an organization breakdown structure is created. The purpose of OBS is to provide framework to summarize the organization unit work performance and identify organization units responsible for each task (Gray and Larson 111). Integration of WBS and OBS is done to make activity distribution easier. The intersection of the WBS and OBS represents the set of work packages necessary to complete the activity located above and the organizational unit on the left responsible for it (Gray and Larson 111). As an example, analyzing current computer model should be done by the software engineering department and product design department in order to come up with a better idea for the new computer. The advantage of using Responsibility Assignment Matrix is that it shows the relationship between the activities and the organization units. CPM and RAM are different in terms of the information that they give. CPM shows the order, precedence and duration of activities. It also determines the critical and non critical activities which are essential in planning. On the other hand, RAM provides a way for project coordination by letting all organization units view their responsibilities and agree on their assigned tasks. This also aids in clear communication between different departments in the company (Gray and Larson 118). 3. Conclusion Careful planning, management and use of tools are very important in any project. Tools such as CPM, WBS, OBS and RAM all provide different information that will aid in project planning and management. Therefore, they should be used hand in hand in order to come up with an effective plan for the project and save costs in the long run. References: Books: Gray, Clifford and Erik Larson. Project Management (3rd Edition). Mc Graw Hill Education, 2006. Hillier, Frederick. Introduction to Operations Research (8th Edition). Mc Graw Hill Education, 2005. Articles: Kanellos, Michael. “PC’s more than 1 Billion Served”. CNET News. 30 June 2002. Read More