Introduction:

In reviewing your procurement specialist's and team leader's recommendations for bundling the

procurement for the new $2$VRAP Phone$$ production facility, you conclude that the ten procurement

packages represent too much of a fragmentation and that by carefully combining these into, say $5$

to $6$ packages $($it is your own decision$-$ there is no right or wrong answer$)$ would be more time and

cost effective. You direct your project team to proceed with procurement on the basis of these $5$ to $6$

packages $($or whatever number determined by the final make$-$or$-$buy analysis decision$).$

You then decide to analyze the total procurement process as a project on its own. For each of the

procurement packages and their activities, you and your team, working together, use your expert

judgment to determine a best estimate for the duration of each. Then, recognizing the inherent

logical dependencies, you construct a simple Critical Path diagram.

Task:

Your task is to show the Critical Path diagram assuming that your start date is January $2$nd of the

current year. In addition, you have to provide an analysis of the critical path to determine if October

$1$st is a realistic completion date. You are required to examine the practical options, and their

implications, and to build in a small time reserve. If October $1$st is not a realistic date, provide your

expert opinion on a realistic completion date. Please justify your recommendations. You can prepare

your critical path diagram either as a free$-$hand drawing, or as an MSWord or Excel graph. If you wish,

you may use MSProject, but it is not required for this course.

This assignment is the logical continuation of the previous one. However, before studying it in detail, it

would be instructive to recount the complete project procurement lifecycle:

You may wish to start by preparing a list of various procurement items$/$ deliverables. Each

would be studied as to content and how best to procure it $($make in$-$house, COTS,

competitive bidding, RFP$,$ etc$).$ A decision is then made on how the procurement goods and

services should logically be packaged.

The lead times for each of these packages would then be estimated, based on the

experience of your team, and any logical dependencies between the packages would be

identified. With the knowledge of the logical dependencies and of estimated lead

times, the procurement packages could be assembled in the form of a

critical path network or diagram. The network could be analyzed, the

time to completion could be calculated, and packages on the critical

and the non$-$critical path could be identified.

The output of the Critical Path network should be examined to verify that

the project completion date can be met, to identify the options available

to restructure the logical sequencing of the package, if the first analysis

indicates that the project completion date required will not be met, and

to identify the scheduling options for the non$-$critical path packages. If the

target completion date is not feasible, provide your best estimate for the realistic

completion date.