Management and the Technology Professional – B302

Case study answer 2

On evaluation of the problem it is clear that step 6 is on the critical path and thus any increase in its duration would affect the whole manufacturing process. There are several solutions to this problem, all with varying risks and expenses. The easiest and cheapest solution by far would be to leave the missed test out and continue as planned. This action has the highest risk factor because it means a defect might make it to the final product with a possibility of future product recalls of which the consequences would be financially harsh and damaging to the company’s reputation. This action is not an action I would recommend.

Another possible action would be to request time allocated to the next step and invest more resources in getting those steps done in a smaller time frame to meet the critical path deadline. Any alteration to other steps in the project will no doubt have an effect on that step and possibly cause a cascade of problems further down the project timeline resulting in a possible failure to meet the project deadline. This action also runs the risk that tests are rushed and the standard level of quality might not be met resulting in an increased possibility of errors being made.

The action I would take would be to make a new critical path to take into account more time to repeat step 6. This would affect the whole manufacturing process causing all the staff involved to change their scheduling to suit and possibly have wider implications on the company. This is only a small setback, the advantage of doing this means we would remain in control of the process and the expenses. The associated costs for this action would only be a one time expense and in Intel’s case a very small expense in relation to their end product’s expected revenue.

In my experience it is necessary to perform all of the planned tests, for example in year 2 for my group project we had to make a weather station in a team of 4. This involved connecting various microcontrollers together. We developed and tested all the microcontrollers, fixing any arising problems. But when we came to connect them all together we hadn’t planned on there being any integration problems and as a result they didn’t actually work together. With very little time remaining we only managed to get half of the features to work as planned.