Activity Description

This group activity will introduce you to the responsibilities of project

management within operations management. The group will look at tasks

involved in planning, scheduling and controlling a project from beginning to

completion. This will include analyzing an activity table, creating a Gantt.

The Awesome Speaker Company

The Awesome Speaker Company is a large international speaker company,

which produces products in Canada, Europe and China. Sales are over

$$100$ million per year.

You have recently accepted a position as an Operations Analyst You report

directly to the Operations Manager. One of the responsibilities of the

Operations Analyst is to participate on various cross$-$functional teams

$($CFT$),$ including new product development $($NPD$).$

You attend your first new product development meeting and the President

of the company is there to announce they have approved the purchase of a

new $3-$D Printer, which is due in $8$ weeks. The purpose of the $3$D printer is

to custom $$print$$ parts for a new speaker they are going to produce calledthe LOUD $1000.$ The company expects that this new speaker will give them

a competitive advantage in the market place as they will be the first to use

the latest technology and $3$D printed parts.

In the high tech speaker, business timing is very important and you must

launch your new products in a strategic window of time. The operations

manager has made it very clear that the senior management wants the

LOUD $1000$ to be properly produced and approved for final sale within $6$

months of this new product meetingActivity Questions

$1.$ Review the activity table provided, what is the longest project

activity?

$2.$ Add up all the activity times

$3.$ Create a Gantt chart using info from the Activities Table

$4.$ Confirm how many weeks it will take to complete the project. Assume

there are $4$ weeks per month.

$5.$ Comment on the duration of the plan

$6.$ Why is the project duration much shorter than the sum of the activity

times