Assignment Case Study 11.2: Ramstein Products, Inc.(1 HR)

The Ramstein case is an example of the problems that often occur once we have padded our activity estimates, through wasting project safety in a variety of ways.The case mentions that Jack is eager to fix project overruns, which are becoming more prevalent, but does not have the option of simply adding resources to his department. Any solutions must come from dealing with existing issues and fixing them.

Questions:

1. Applying Goldratt's idea of critical resources, what is the system constraint within the Special Projects Division that is causing bottlenecks and delaying projects?

2. How is multitasking contributing to systemic delays in project development at Ramstein?

3. Using concepts from Critical Chain Portfolio management, how could buffer-drum concepts be applied to this problem?

Assignment Case Study 10.1: Project Scheduling at Blanque Cheque Construction (A) (1 HR)

The general nature of the project, developing a strip mall with four stores of roughly equal size, is intended to challenge students to identify a variety of activities necessary to accomplish the project.The first step is to make a simple WBS of the various project activities and deliverables that will be required.Instructors can decide in advance how much detail they want students to go into for this assignment; for example, they may wish to leave all elements at the Deliverable level and not get down to specific Work Packages.

Questions:

a. Develop a project network consisting of at least 20 steps that should be done to complete the project.As the case suggests, keep the level of detail for these activities general, rather than specific.Be sure to indicate some degree of precedence relationship among the activities.

b. Suppose you now wanted to calculate duration estimates for these activities.How would you make use of the following approaches?Are some more useful than others?

i. Expert opinion

ii. Past history

iii. Mathematical derivation

c. Joe was trying to decide which scheduling format to employ for his planning: AON or AOA.What are some of the issues that Joe should first consider prior to choosing between these methods?

Assignment Case Study 11.2: Ramstein Products, Inc.(1 HR)

The Ramstein case is an example of the problems that often occur once we have padded our activity estimates, through wasting project safety in a variety of ways.The case mentions that Jack is eager to fix project overruns, which are becoming more prevalent, but does not have the option of simply adding resources to his department. Any solutions must come from dealing with existing issues and fixing them.

Questions:

1. Applying Goldratt's idea of critical resources, what is the system constraint within the Special Projects Division that is causing bottlenecks and delaying projects?

2. How is multitasking contributing to systemic delays in project development at Ramstein?

3. Using concepts from Critical Chain Portfolio management, how could buffer-drum concepts be applied to this problem?