Management and the Technology Professional – B302

Case study answer 2

The critical path analysis is a tool that illustrates the individual tasks of a project highlighting the expected starting and finishing tasks of each. Ultimately, the critical path analysis will suggest which tasks are critical to keep on time anticipating that the delay in any one of the tasks will delay the whole project and hence I will base my decision on the CPA. After performing the analysis, it had been found that step 6 is part of the critical path and it has to be completed before proceeding with the following task. It is highly significant to perform final testing on a product before it is released out into the market. Testing ensures that the final product has met its objectives in terms of quality assurance and that products are able to deliver the performance that designers expect. Thus, the product will find its own way throughout the market and customers’ satisfaction will be achieved. On the other hand, missing such a critical stage within the project will cause harm both to the company and its clients as the company’s notoriety will be under threat of going down and clients may become angry and dissatisfied.

As I am the supervisor of step 6 in this project, I take the full responsibility of the mistake and its direct effects and would like to suggest a number of solutions and pick up the most convenient one.

To begin with, it is not efficient just to run the missed test on its own as this dose not address efficiency and the automation process of the manufacturing environment. Subsequently, the whole of step 6 will need to be re-executed which means the production has to under-go a period of 4 days. Therefore, I will ask the management for an extension period in which final tests will be conducted and dealt with before resuming with step 7. Also, I need to take into account the time horizon that will be needed and the cost and effort that will be involved to complete the step. This may suggest that the deadline of the project is likely to be extended. To catch up with the schedule, I will ensure that the team responsible for step 7 and 8 swift their job by asking them to work extra hours and set timing shifts. Let us say the request was met with a huge refusal from the manager. I would then suggest another idea that would be to check the day of grace available between tasks. Day of grace is an extension of the time originally scheduled for the performance of a step or act. These extra days between tasks can be used to rerun step 6. However, this factor relies on the number of days scheduled in the back up plan and whether particular tasks have been accomplished earlier than expected so these days can be compensated for the sake of performing step 6.


Secondly, it would be possible to bring this manufacturing process into halt and start with another process. Once the other process catches up with the missed step of the previous production, it will be the time to start multitasking by performing both final tests simultaneously and finishing them at the same time. This will require additional staff as the work load will be doubled and I may ask part time or temporary staff to join and aid the process. A point to take into consideration here is that it is of profound importance that the suspended badge of products does not get mixed with the new process as it has not yet been fully tested and therefore should be isolated by storing items in a storage or asking a third party to provision for those products. This solution suffers from a number of drawbacks which are more stocking space will be needed and as product shipment will be postponed, clients are likely to complain from a shortage of semiconductors in the global market hence giving a bad impression about Intel Corporation which may lead to loosing loyal customers.

My last suggestion would be to estimate the percentage of quality assurance and if it is found to be between (80-90) percent as well as taking into account that this mistake is a one-time mistake; I would sacrifice the faulty percentage of the product (10-20) percent and proceed up with step 7 in order to save time and effort. Nonetheless, in this case I would like to be ethical and honest to Intel customers by informing them of the low quality standard met in this stream of products and sell items at a lower price.

After a deep thought and analysis of the available solutions, I eliminated the first two solutions as they will all result in a delay in completing the project as customers will be waiting for shipments and I would like to avoid that at any costs. In addition, option two will require financial cost if an external party is to be involved in the process of provisioning items and for this purpose I have chosen the third option to solve the matter. On the one hand, I have come to a conclusion that the third option would be the most relevant decision to take in such a critical scenario. On the second hand, the negative point about this solution is that Intel image might be scratched and for this reason, this mistake must never come into existence and therefore I would like to draw some attention to the following points that will be mentioned in the last few lines.

A number of precautions and measures to be set in advance before commencing a project as to learn from mistakes and avoid potential hazards. It is wise to produce a back up plan for a project in order to be able to withstand unexpected incidents and recover from them in the minimum amount of time and cost. Also the back up plan should allow for time space between tasks. Moreover, I have found that by relying on me only to supervise the project has not been sufficient enough. Thus, I would like to ask the management to assign an external party or a Quality Circle to monitor the progress alongside and compare my reports with them to double check each step is fully done and logged. The Quality Circle is a better option as it a volunteer group that will discuss workplace improvement whereas the external party is likely to cost huge amount of money.