Project Management Question:

Question 1 Quality Furniture produces handcrafted wooden furniture from locally sourced timber. They sell their products through their four shops and via a mail-order catalogue. Their production process is labour-intensive and involves skilled craftspeople, which means their products are quite expensive. Research conducted by the marketing manager has shown that there is a big market for a range of less-expensive furniture sold under the Quality Furniture brand. The marketing manager has recommended launching a new range of furniture called QualityEconomy. To lower the costs and thus reduce the price, this new furniture range will be produced using an automated manufacturing process. The operations director believes this process will have the added benefit of improving the overall productivity figures for the manufacture and creation of the entire Quality Furniture range. The board of directors has created a project mandate to produce a limited range of QualityEconomy products and launch them onto the market. The project mandate recommends that the project will consist of the following stages: Stage 1: Initiation. Stage 2: Market research. Research the market to help identify a number of products for the QualityEconomy range. Create designs for the new products. Stage 3: Create prototypes for the new QualityEconomy products and define the requirements for the new production machinery needed to manufacture the QualityEconomy products. Stage 4: Purchase and install the new production machinery. Train the operators of the production machinery. Market the QualityEconomy range, including sending an updated Quality Furniture catalogue to existing and potential clients, updating the website, and creating and sending out press releases. Initial estimates are that the project will take six months and cost $400,000. The project has a cost tolerance of plus or minus 10 percent and a time tolerance of plus or minus two weeks. You have been selected as the project manager of this project