Lesson Plan 4
Topics to be covered today.
Project Management
Quality Management
Project Management (Slack, pages 495-533)
“The market requires specified time, quality, and cost of a project, while the operations group supplies the delivery of the project, on-time, on-specification and within budget.” Slack, Operations Management, © 2013, page 495.
This chapter of Slack’s text on operations management covers project planning and control.
What is a project?
“A project is a set of activities with a defined start point and a defined end state, which pursues a defined goal and uses a defined set of resources.” Slack, page 497
Some important characteristics of all projects.
All projects deal with some degree of uncertainty.
All projects are planned before they are executed.
All projects must deal with risk.
There is a difference between “projects” versus “programs.”
In general, a project represents a single, focused endeavor.
While, on the other hand, a program is viewed as a collection of projects that are integrated and complementary to each other.
Operations Principles in the Area of Project Management.
The difficulty of managing a project is a function of its scale, complexity and uncertainty.
Aspects of Successful Project Management. Slack, page 499
Clearly defined goals
A competent project manager
Top management support
Competent project team members
Sufficient resource allocation
Adequate communication channels
Control mechanisms
Feedback capabilities
Responsiveness to clients
Troubleshooting mechanisms
Project staff continuity
The Project Manager.
To coordinate the efforts of many people in different parts of the organization, all projects need a project manager.
The people working in a project team need a clear understanding of their roles in the organization.
Further, controlling an uncertain project environment requires the rapid exchange of relevant information with the project stakeholders, both within and outside the organization.
And last, people, equipment and other resources must be identified and allocated to the various tasks.
To effectively manage the tasks involved in a complex project there are five characteristics that are seen as particularly important in a competent project manager.
Background and experience consistent with the needs of the project.
Leadership skill and strategic expertise necessary for successfully delivering on the project requirements.
Good technical expertise so sound technical decisions will be made.
Interpersonal competence and people skills to take on such roles as project champion, motivator, communicator, facilitator, and politician.
Proven managerial ability to ensure that things will get done as needed.
Stages Involved in Project Management.
Stage 1. Understanding the project environment.
Stage 2. Project definition.
Stage 3. Project planning.
Stage 4. Technical execution.
Stage 5. Project control.
Understanding the Project Environment.
The project environment comprises all the factors which may affect the project during its life.
Understanding the project environment is important because the environment affects the way in which a project will need to be managed and the possible dangers that may cause the project to fail.
Stakeholders.
One way of understanding a project’s environment is to consider the various ‘stakeholders’ who have some kind of interest in the project.
The stakeholders in any project are the individuals and groups who have an interest in the project process or outcome.
Communicating with stakeholders early and frequently can ensure that they fully understand the project and understand potential benefits.
Project Definition.
Before starting a project, it is important to be clear about what exactly is the project; that is, what is the project definition.
Three elements define a project.
The objectives – cost, time, and quality.
The project scope – the scope of a project identifies its work content, its products, and its outcomes.
And its strategy – the third part of a project’s definition is the project strategy, which defines, in a general rather than a specific way, how the project is going to meet its objectives.
Defining the phases of the project
Setting milestones
Project Planning.
The planning process fulfills four distinct purposes.
It determines the cost and duration of the project.
It determines the level of resources which will be needed.
It helps to allocate work and to monitor progress.
It helps to assess the impact of any changes to the project.
The process of project planning involves five steps.
Identify the activities in the project / The Work Breakdown Structure
Estimate the times and resources for activities
Identify the relationships and dependencies between the activities
Identify time and resources schedule constraints
Fix the schedule for time and resources
What is Network Planning?
“Network planning (or project networking) is a generic name for methods that study projects as a set of interconnected activities with the purpose of assisting in planning, managing, and controlling projects.” Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science, Springer-Link, 10/25/2005.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.10071-4020-0611-X_665
Further, a project network is a graph that shows the activities, duration, and interdependencies of tasks within a project. “What is a Network Diagram in Project Management,” Wrike, no date.
https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-a-network-diagram-in-project-management/
Examples of Network Planning Tools.
Gantt Charts
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_03.htm
Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT)
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pert-chart.asp
Critical Path Method (CPM)
https://www.wrike.com/blog/critical-path-is-easy-as-123/
https://www.workamajig.com/blog/critical-path-method
Operations Principles in the Area of Project Management.
Managing Projects. The difficulty of managing a project is a function of its scale, complexity, and uncertainty.
Requirements for Effective Project Management. The activity of project management requires interpersonal as well as technical skills.
Stakeholder Interests. All projects have stakeholders with different interests and priorities.
Stakeholder Responsibilities and Rights. Project stakeholders have responsibilities as well as rights.
The Iron Triangle of Project Management. Different projects will place different levels of emphasis on cost, time, and quality objectives.
Quality Management (Slack, pages 534 – 561)
“With respect to quality management, the market requires consistent quality of products and services, and operations management is the function that supplies consistent delivery of products and services at the required specification or better.”
Note that high quality products or services alone can give an organization significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.
“A key task of the operations function is to ensure that it provides quality goods and services, both to its internal and external customers.”
The Operations View of Quality.
The Customer’s View of Quality.
“Quality needs to be understood from a customer’s point of view because, to the customer, the quality of a particular service or product is whatever he or she perceives it to be.”
“Also, customers may be unable to judge the ‘technical’ specification of the service or product and so use surrogate measures as a basis for their perception of quality.”
“If a service or product experience is better than expected, then the customer is satisfied, and quality is perceived to be high. If the service or product was less than his or her expectations, then quality is perceived as low, and the customer may be dissatisfied.”
Diagnosing Quality Gaps
The customer’s specification-operation’s specification gap.
Mismatch between the organization’s own internal quality and specification and the specification which is expected by the customer.
The concept specification gap.
Mismatch between the service or product concept and the way the organization has specified quality internally.
The quality specification-actual quality gap.
Mismatch between actual quality and the internal quality specification.
The actual quality-communicated image gap.
There is a gap between the organization’s external communications or market image and the actual quality delivered to the customer.
Conformance to Specification.
Conformance to specification means providing a service or producing a product to its design specification.
It is usually seen as the most important contribution that operations management can make to the customer’s perception of quality.
Achieving conformance to specification requires the following steps:
Step 1: Define the quality characteristics of the service or product.
Step 2: Decide how to measure each quality characteristic.
Step 3: Set quality standards for each quality characteristic.
Step 4: Control quality against those standards.
Step 5: Find and correct causes of poor quality.
Step 6: Continue to make improvements
Evaluating Quality Characteristics.
Quality characteristics for an automobile, bank loan, and an air journey
Quality characteristics of an online grocery shopping service.
The measures used by operations to describe quality characteristics are of two types: variables and attributes.
Variables.
Variable measures are those that can be measured on a continuously variable scale (for example, length, diameter, weight, or time).
Attributes.
Attributes are those which are assessed by judgment and have one of two states (for example, right or wrong, works or does not work, looks ok or doesn’t look ok).
Examples of the measurement of variables and attributes for establishing the quality of a car or an airline trip.
Checking or Testing for Quality.
Hypothesis Testing: Type I and II Errors.
Type I errors are those which occur when a decision was made to do something, and the situation did not warrant it.
Type II errors are those which occur when nothing was done, yet a decision to do something should have been taken as the situation did indeed warrant it.
Statistical Process Control (SPC).
https://asq.org/quality-resources/statistical-process-control
Statistical process control is defined as the use of statistical techniques to control a process or production method.
“The most common approach for checking the quality of a sample service or product so as to make inferences about all the output from an operation is called statistical process control (SPC).” Slack, page 546
“SPC is concerned with sampling the process during the production of the goods or the delivery of service.”
“Based on this sample, decisions are made as to whether the process is ‘in control’, that is, operating as it should be.”
A key aspect of SPC is that it looks at the variability in the performance of processes to check whether the process is operating as it should do (this is known as the process being ‘in control’).”
“In fact, variability (or more specifically, reducing variability) is one of the most important objectives of quality improvement.”
Total Quality Management.
https://videos.asq.org/tqm-the-history-and-the-now
“TQM can be viewed as a logical extension of the way in which quality-related practice has progressed.”
“Originally quality was achieved by inspection – screening out defects before they were noticed by customers.”
“The quality control (QC) concept then developed a more systematic approach to not only detecting, but also treating, quality problems.”
“Quality assurance (QA) followed by widening the responsibility for quality to include functions other than direct operations. It also made increasing use of more sophisticated statistical quality techniques.”
“TQM included much of what went before but developed its own distinctive themes.”
“Total quality management (TQM) now represents a clear shift from traditional approaches to quality.”
What is Total Quality Management?
“TQM is ‘an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels that allow for full customer satisfaction’.”
The Philosophy of TQM.
“TQM is best thought of as a philosophy of how to approach quality improvement.”
“This philosophy, above all else, stresses the ‘total’ of TQM.”
“It is an approach that puts quality at the heart of everything that is done by an operation including all activities within an operation.”
This totality can be summarized by the way TQM lays stress on the following aspects of business:
Meeting the needs and expectations of customers
Covering all parts of the organization
Including every person in the quality team of the organization
Examining all costs which are related to quality, especially failure costs and getting things done right the first time
Developing systems and procedures which support quality and improvement
Developing a continuous process of improvement
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