Iron Butterfly Company is a medium-sized engineering and manufacturing firm specializing in warehousing and materials handling systems. The company purchases most of the subsystems and components for its products and assembles them to satisfy customer requirements. Every IBC system is made to customer specification and most of the firm's work is in system design, assembly, installation, and checkout. The firm's 250 employees are roughly equally divided among five divisions: engineering, design, fabrication, customer service, and marketing. Recently, com- petition has forced the firm to expand into computerized warehousing systems despite its rather limited experience and expertise in that field. IBC has been awarded a large contract for a robotic system for placement, storage, retrieval, and routing of shipping containers for truck and rail by the Midwest Parcel Distribution Company. This system, called the Logistical Online System, LOGON, is to be developed and installed at Midwest's main distribution center in Chicago. The contract is fixed price at $14.5 million and includes design, fabrication, and installation at the center. IBC was awarded the contract because it was the lowest bihand has an outstanding record for quality and customer service. A clause in the contract imposes a penalty of $1,000 daily for failure to meet the specified delivery date. At various times throughout the estimated 47-week project, personnel from the functional divisions of design, fabrication, procurement, and customer service will be involved, most on a full-time basis for between 4 and 18 weeks. In the past, the company has set up ad hoc project management teams comprised of a project coordinator and members from the functional areas These teams are then responsible for planning, scheduling, and budgeting the actual work to be done by the functional departments. Team members serve primarily as liaisons to the functional areas and work part-time on the teams. The LOGON contract differs from other IBC systems, both in its heavy usage of computerized, real-time operation via remote terminals, and in its size. Although IBC has some prior experience with real-time warehousing systems, the technology involved is continuously evolving. IBC recently hired people with the backgrounds needed for the project. In addition, it has signed contracts with CRC and CreativeRobotics to provide the computer and robotics hardware, and assistance with system design, installation, and checkout. The LOGON contract is among the largest IBC has ever undertaken. The company is pres- ently in the middle of two other projects that absorb roughly three-fourths of its labor capacity, is winding down on a third that involves only the customer service division, and has two outstanding proposals for small projects under review. Discuss how you would organize the LOGON project if you were the president of IBC. Discuss the alternatives available for the LOGON project and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. What assumptions must be made?