J.L. Braessler Manufacturing has designed and made home workshop tools for a number of years. Recently, a

Question:

J.L. Braessler Manufacturing has designed and made home workshop tools for a number of years. Recently, a member of the company’s new-product research team submitted a report suggesting that the company should consider manufacturing a heavy-duty cordless electric drill that could be powered by a special rechargeable battery with a longer battery life and faster charging that competitors’ models. Because no other manufacturer currently has such a product, management hopes that the product can be manufactured at a reasonable cost and that its portability will make it extremely attractive. Braessler’s top managers have initiated a project to study the feasibility of this idea. The end result of the feasibility project will be a report recommending the action to be taken for this new product. The project manager, Lauren, has identified a list of activities and a range of times necessary to complete each activity. This information is given in Exhibit 19.21.

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Case Questions for Discussion:

1.Apply concepts of PERT to analyze the uncertainty in this project. Draw the project network, compute expected times and variances, identify the critical activities, and find the earliest possible projectcompletion date using the expected times and construct an early-start Gantt chart for the project.

2.Compute probabilities for completing the project by weeks 18, 20, 22, and 24. Discuss how Lauren might use this information to manage the project.

3.At the end of week 12, Activity D was completed, earlier than expected. How does this impact the projected project-completion date? Draw a new Gantt chart to illustrate this.