- Introduction
Project management is practiced by organization to achieve to temporary goal associated with the completion of the underlying project (Meredith & Mantel, 2012). The concept can be further elaborated as project management refers to manage and complete an assigned task to achieve unique outcomes with given resources, (Lewis, 2002). The project is developed and undertaken to achieve the goal of expansion in the company’s product by producing larger touring motorcycles with larger motors to cater new markets abroad. Aligning with proposed strategies to the management for producing larger motorcycles, the paper presented below will solely consider the project of producing larger motors for touring motorcycles. The paper will also provide a comprehensive task achievement plan to define measures for effective management of the project.
- Project Scope and Project Management Plan
Project scope refers to define the boundaries of the project underlying in order to remain focused and aligned with the primary goals of the project as stated by Kloppenborg, (2014). To be aligned with primary objectives of the project, the scope of the project is defined as the “manufacturing goal of production of larger motors for the touring motorcycles”. Scope of the project is kept limited because manufacturing of new equipment is all in all a comprehensive operational section for expansion of touring class motorcycles and need to be focused alone to achieve desired outcomes. However, management has decided to focus the other goals of the overall project of expanding touring class motorcycle to be addressed separately including marketing section and creating larger engines.
The project management plan is developed to provide a scientific approach of project management by presenting a managing structure and a task completion plan along with time considerations, keeping the scope in consideration. The plan will aid to achieve the goals related to the manufacturing of larger motors. For the purpose, the proposed plan includes the requirements for the project manager, staffing and team building strategies, work breakdown structure with a graphical timeline including critical path of the larger motors project.
- Staffing Plan
The staffing plan for a new project is developed by employing the staffing strategies of the company. The practices employed for the staffing of the manufacturing units of the company taking the manufacturing unit into account are utilized as benchmarking practices. As the project is developed to accomplish manufacturing tasks, a set of skilled as well as unskilled labor and supervising staff will be required. The strategy applied for the selection of staffing is project Incremental-based staffing.
- Staffing Strategy Project based staffing-Incremental
Technique employed by the management of the business, who has to increase or rearrange staffing of the current level for any new project aligned with the previous working capabilities of the company (Bratton, & Gold, 2009). Employing the technique quantitative staffing requirements with along with the assigned designation is presented below in the given table.
Developed staffing guide suggests that there will be a need of allocating a total shifts staff of 165 for production of the new larger engines with the team of 4 engineers and 6 procurement managers. The supervisory of the whole project will then come under production head, project manager, and division head as per hierarchical order.
- Wages Plan
Production daily goals are highly dependent on the availability of labor on daily basis. On the other hand, wage rate offered is important in attracting the labors. Therefore, the wages plan is kept aligned with the daily production goals via employing daily wages strategy per produced unit. The objective behind the plan is that the labor will remain motivated to perform on the required level of production and absenteeism costs will be saved. Additionally, top hierarchical present and new staff wages plan will align with their level of qualification; level of experience and responsibility allocated.
- Hierarchical Chart
The hierarchical Chart for the specific project is developed below to develop understanding of whole internal procedure. The chart below presented a view of expanded hierarchical order for the morning shift that also represents the functionality of other shifts in the same manner.
- Team Building Strategies
Team building is vital for the projects that are associated with manufacturing purposes. The main reason is that the organization with the same vision of teams and less hierarchical hindrance can develop efficient internal communication process. Further, the positive competition in between teams lead to higher performance. For the purpose, as staffing guide represented, teams will be built with the equal number of workers and allocated to three shifts. Working schedule is divided into shifts in order to exploit the full capacity of the manufacturing plant. Following strategies are taken into account for the purpose of team building.
- First and most important strategy for team building will be aligning all the teams with one common goal of the purpose. HR department will be assigned the duty of promoting unifying code of conduct among all the teams to enhance united cultural values.
- Skill mix will be the main strategy of allocating balanced human resource to each team for the purpose of getting quality output equally from all the teams. Further, same designations will be accounted for people having same level of education and expertise.
- Communication strategy for transparency of processes will be utilized. It will be achieved via same description of duties for the teams, centralized communication system and joint training sessions. However, team hierarchy will be mean for downward and upward communication for routine tasks and issues.
- Team heads will be trained to employ a leadership style management. It will enhance process efficiency via flexible conduct in a particular situation as well as for a particular issue.
The strategies mentioned above will aid organization in building efficient teams that will surely deliver in the success of the project.
- Role of the Project Manager
Success and failure of a project is highly dependent on the management of the project manager (Young, 2013). In the field of project management, the role of a project manager is supposed to be critical in the success of the project. Here, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive profile of project manager and strategies to allocate the task of the project to the manager that aid management in achieving the project goals in a smooth manner. The hiring of the project managers will be done on the following measures.
- Project manger’s profile must be perfectly fit in the criteria of underlying project including, qualification and technical skills required, and experience in the same manner. Moreover, the ability to move forward the whole project with efficiently meeting deadlines is another important quality of a project manager that will be needed. However, the project manager can be a new incumbent or from existing staff.
- Second consideration will be the personality traits of a manager that aid her achieving her individual as well as organizational goals associated with the project. Here, the focus will be on the critical thinking ability of the manager which is required to assess on-going situations, level of performance and risk associated and take measures accordingly.
- Finally, the success of the organization is highly dependent on the ability of their top management to develop a culture for openness of expression. The project manager as obviously dealing with the workforce allocated for the project should also be able to enhance the viability of company’s communication strategy and internal process.
The mentioned factors will be considered when detailed job description for the designation will be crafted. Further, then on the requirements of the job description a set of the job specification will be developed to visualize the alignment of incumbent’s traits with the requirement of the designation of the project manager.
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Successful completion of the project requires to complete each and every task with due consideration. Project management provides tool of work breakdown structure for breaking the entire job into small chunks with respective details. This in turn enables the project manager and relevant responsible people to ensure the completion of the entire project without missing any important aspect. In addition to the detailed check on the aspect of the project to be completed, it also enables the project manager to complete the project within planned cost and time. With this concept at effect, work breakdown structure for this project is developed as follows:
1.0. Start of the project by Head of Department
1.1. Selection and hiring of a qualified project manager
1.2. Developing a project plan
1.3. Acquisition of required capital
1.4. Fulfilling legal mandatory requirements
1.5. Selecting and refurbishment of the site
1.5.1. Refurbishment of Core production section
1.5.2. Refurbishment of the assembly section
1.5.3. Refurbishment of the finishing section
1.5.4. Refurbishment of finishing section and packaging section
1.5.5. Refurbishment of support sections like electricity panel, admin panel, parking (loading and unloading sections)
2.0. Meeting Pre-operations requirement
2.1. Preparation of plan of operation plan for the business including policy statement, standard operation procedures, and regulatory statements
2.2. Selection of the vendors for machinery
2.3. Machinery import and installation
2.4. Test run of the machinery
2.5. Recruitment, hiring and selection of head of the sections for each operational department
2.6. Recruitment, hiring and selection of the technical team such as department team leads, floor supervisor, engineers (both senior level and junior level), technical staff, support staff such as a computer operator
2.7. Selection of the contractor for production material
2.8. Selection of the contractor for logistic support services provider
2.9. First batch run for test of motorcycle
2.10. Initiation of the marketing campaign for the motorcycle
3.0. Operations Initiation
3.1. Initiation of the batch wise production
3.2. Transport of batch to the market
3.3. Point of assessment for monitoring and control points in supply chain
4.0. Cost Recovery Phase and Profitability
4.1. Assessment and comparison of actual and charted setup plan
4.2. Assessment of batch runs towards optimization
4.3. Marginal units for achieving breakeven
4.4. Cost recovery and the profitability generation
5.0. Closing of the Project
5.1. Identifying areas of potential recovery
5.2. Outlining areas of potential critical strength across the supply chain
5.3. Developing project report
5.4. Handing of project information to the management of the business
- Gantt chart and Critical path
Business plan and project management plans often produce the flow chart of the activities with respective details related to time, human, and capital resources associated with each section of the plan. Technically in the discipline of the project management, referred flow chart is known as Gantt chart. Simply, it can also be defined as the graphical depiction of the flow of activities defined in the work breakdown structure. It also produces information of connectivity of the activities with each other. Similar Gantt chart also provides the highlighted link of critical path.
Critical path entail the link of activities that must be completed within the specific time to complete the project on time, as other activities are dependent on them. Among many softwares available for the purpose, Microsoft Project has been employed for developing detailed Gantt chart for the project plan. The gantt chart is presented in the appendix section:
- Conclusion
The project plan proposed above is developed cautiously to attain the project goals profitably with the fame of project scope. Exploiting the techniques mentioned in the plan and following the strategies presented systematically will increase the chances of successful completion or enhancement of the project to the next module.
References
Bratton, J. & Gold, J. (2009). Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice, 4th edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kloppenborg, T. (2014). Contemporary project management. Cengage Learning.
Lewis, J. P. (2002). Fundamentals of project management: developing core competencies to help outperform the competition. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Meredith, J. R., & Mantel Jr, S. J. (2011). Project management: a managerial approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Young, T. L. (2013). Successful project management (Vol. 52). Kogan Page Publishers.
Appendix
Gantt Chart
