Project and Operations Management

Case Study Assignment – MG2008 – 2013/2014

1 Project Management Case Study assignment 40% 1500 – 2000 words Coursework 1, 3

It counts 40% towards your total mark of MG2008.

The intended learning outcomes of this assignment are

1. Express a systematic understanding of knowledge areas in project management
3. Apply various project management knowledge areas to a case

You will be given a case study and are expected to apply several project management knowledge areas (scope management, time management, resource management, risk management) to it. Additionally you will be asked to answer some questions to demonstrate your understanding of selected concepts.
Submission and Feedback

Case Study

Your role

Imagine that you have just graduated at UCLAN and have now a junior operations management job at an international automotive company called Car-part Ltd. It has one headquarter in the UK and subsidiaries in Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and France. The company produces parts for car doors. These parts are sold to car manufacturers (VW, Seat, Skoda, Ford, Fiat, and Peugeot) who use them for the final assembly of their cars.

Car-part Ltd. decides to involve you in a project to improve their health & safety standards world-wide. You are supposed to assist the Chief Operations Manager Paul Higgs to set up this project. You will be the project manager.

Reasons for the project:

There have been three serious health & safety incidents at Car-Part Ltd. in August 2013: one worker in Spain was seriously injured because he was trapped in a machine, one worker in Italy died because he slipped, banged his head, and fractured his skull. One factory in Poland caught fire for unknown reasons and many workers were seriously injured in this incident because the emergency exit doors of the factory did not work properly.

These incidents have been heavily criticised by the press and threw a bad light on Car-part Ltd. Some customers threaten now to stop their orders next year if the Health & Safety issues at Car-Part Ltd. are not immediately resolved. Therefore the Chief Executive Officer of the headquarter, Julia Miller, decided in September 2013 to ask Paul Higgs, the Chief Operations Manager of the group, to set up a project to solve the problem.

Background of the current health & safety policy at Car-Part Ltd.:

The UK headquarter has high standards according to the Health & Safety Executive regulations in the UK, see http://www.hse.gov.uk/. It did not control the subsidiaries in the past because it was assumed that they had high standards too. Automotive manufacturers tend to check the Health & Safety standards of their suppliers.

In previous years there have been only a couple of major incidents: A factory in Poland burned down in 2011 but nobody was injured. One worker in Italy was seriously injured in 2010 when he slipped on the factory floor on a banana skin. The other three companies (in UK, Germany, and France) did not have any significant incidents within the last five years.

Julia Miller (CEO) made the following press statement in September 2013: “Car-Part Ltd is committed to be a company that acts in a responsible way according to principles of Corporate and Social Responsibility. We welcome that our customers, the car manufacturers, require high health & safety standards from us as their suppliers. We will do everything to investigate the three recent incidents and improve our Health & Safety standards world-wide so that such incidents are in future prevented.”

Unofficially she instructs Paul Higgs to make sure that the problems are solved as fast as possible. She perceives this situation as a major business threat; therefore the project needs to have highest priority. She is willing to give Paul Higgs unlimited additional budget for this project. She would like a monthly update of the progress made.

Task 1 – 10 % (30 – 100 words)
You are supposed to be the project manager for this project.

How would you describe the benefits and outcomes of this project, following PRINCE2 definitions?

Assessment criteria for task 1:

Ability to apply the concept of benefits and outcomes to a case – your understanding and the quality of your examples will be marked

Create your answer in MS Word. You are supposed to define benefits and outcomes in general before you apply these concepts. Please use your own words to demonstrate your understanding.

More background information for your next task:
You propose to Paul Higgs the following output of the project. Your proposed deliverables are

I. Report (MS Word document) that describes the current Health & Safety procedures in all five countries, statistics of their success (e.g. number of accidents per year etc.), and performance comparison

This report is meant to provide information if there are differences between the countries and if these differences lead to more or less success in Health & Safety – if so all countries should follow the practices of the best performing country.

II. Report (MS Word document) of the result of a survey: views of employees in Italy, Spain and Poland of what are the problems with Health & Safety at Car-Part Ltd. and how to solve them

Your position is that employees have often the best idea of what goes wrong in Health & Safety because they see it every day. A survey would not only allow gathering problems and ideas how to solve them, but also compare the efficiency of different plants by measuring satisfaction of employees with Health & Safety procedures.

III. Report of reasons for the five major incidences that happened since 2010

A result of interviews with plant managers and employees in the plants that had the incidents and a result of an inspection of these plants
IV. Organisation of a workshop in Spain with all Plant Managers of the six companies, Paul Higgs and Julia Miller to decide what changes are necessary in Car-Part Ltd.’s health & safety procedures

This workshop is supposed to facilitate the decision how to solve the current Health & Safety problems at Car-Part Ltd.

Assume that your project starts earliest at the 1st November 2013. Assume that you are the only person in this project and have to do everything yourself (gathering information, writing the reports, organising the workshop, managing the project).

Task 2 – 30%
Create an MS Project Plan with MS Project!
Show the following screenshots:

Network diagram with critical path
Resource diagram

What you should consider in task 2 to get a high mark:
1) Scope Management
a) Define the necessary tasks to create the deliverables.
b) Break them down to a level that you can make realistic time estimates for the duration of the tasks on the lowest level. Do not plan too detailed. Do not define tasks that take less than one day duration.
c) Use milestones to highlight when you plan to achieve the deliverables
d) The tasks and headings of the tasks and milestones should be self-explaining, no need to explain them in MS Word Use INDENT and OUTDENT in MS Project to create the structure.
e) Use automatic numbering in MS Project
f) Your MS Project plan should have a heading for the whole project, e.g. “Health & Safety Emergency Project – Tranche 1” – this enables you to see the project duration when you have planned the time of the tasks.
2) Time Management
a) Estimate the duration of the tasks in MS Project
b) Define the dependencies between the tasks.
c) Use automatic scheduling
d) Insert a “work” column in MS Project so that you can make an estimate of the workload needed for each task. This is essential for tasks that require longer duration than workload, e.g. you have to wait for replies after having written and posted an invitation for the workshop.
3) Resource Management
a) Add yourself as resource to each task
b) Make sure that you are not overloaded (more than 100 % workload). This should be shown in the resource diagram.
4) Plan the following Project Management task. Assume that Paul Higgs and Julia Miller want to meet you every two weeks to be informed about the progress. You are supposed to prepare and attend these steering group meetings.

Assessment criteria for task 2:

Quality of the work breakdown structure
Quality of the time plan
Quality of the resource plan
Quality of the use of MS Project functionalities

Task 3 – 30% (500 – 1000 words)
Please evaluate if it is useful in this case to use the Critical Path Method as scheduling method. Please explain if its advantages (based on academic literature) apply in this case considering that only one person is executing the project.

Task 4 – 30% (500 – 1,000 words)
What are advantages of risk management according to the academic literature? Please discuss which of these advantages would apply in this Health & Safety project and how you would organise risk management in this case to achieve the advantages.

Assessment criteria for tasks 3 and 4

Quality of ability to understand the evaluation of selected project management knowledge areas

Quality of the ability to judge if a project management technique or method is appropriate for a case

Correct use of Referencing system

Appropriate use of academic literature, 8-12 academic literature resources for the whole assignment – books of professional bodies (APM, PMI) are acceptable, project management textbooks are acceptable, and project management webpages that are not peer reviewed are not acceptable.

Marking grid
Task 1

Mark Outcomes: ………………

Mark Benefits: ………………

Total Mark Task 1: ………………

Task 2

Total Mark Task 2: ………………

Task 3

Total Mark Task 3: ………………

Task 4

Total Mark Task 4: ………………

Total Mark: ………………..

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