Essay: Project Management Of ABC Packaging Company.

Discuss about the Project Based Management of ABC Packaging Company.

Project based management framework takes an important part to help the characteristics evaluation, which are common to the organizations. Project managers working within the small enterprises can begin the projects, which are the major reason of failure of the project without any kind of formal planning. It can be defined as the model, which can organize the activities of project (Akhavan, Reza Zahedi and Hosein Hosein 2014). ABC Packaging Company is a well-established company which is a family-owned organization. This organization has originated its operation in 1980 and over the years through business collaborations as well as strategic investments ABC is now leading exporter and manufacturer of distinct printing and packaging requirements in South Pacific with 150 employees. ABC packaging organization implemented a project last year that deals with developing a recycled fibre paper mill in Fiji for meeting the enhanced requirement for grooved cartons as well as guarantees a supply of corrugated paper on a daily basis with lower prices and better quality. This report aims to analyze the business case contents of ABC Packaging. This study also differentiates the best practices and academic theory of project management against what has actually taken place.

Project Management Process – Project management process is the discipline of controlling, executing, planning, initiating as well as closing the work of a tem for achieving particular objectives and meeting specific success criteria (Ahern, Leavy and Byrne 2014). Major characteristics of a project include involvement of several disciplines, Timeline that signifies a project has a definite beginning and end, clearly defined objectives, resources, functions, technical and complex in nature, dynamic that indicates unexpected problem scenarios, high cost overrun and risk probabilities (Ramazani and Jergeas 2015).

In Fiji, No packaging company wanted to build a paper mill in the country. Thus, establishment of the first recycled fiber paper mill by ABC Packaging in the country is an authentic project with properly demonstrated goals. This project encompasses an initiation stage. Moreover, it would progress over several stages like design, development feasibility study as well as execution. Project would be finished after installation, doing and commissioning machinery trials (Yeow 2014). In addition, the project of developing paper mill involves several disciplines, resources and functions. These disciplines incorporate involvement of consultants, engineers, project managers and builders; making relationships with regulatory authorities, government and service providers such as water authority, land department, financial institutions, banks, port authority as well as lawyers. The projects of establishing paper mills are highly complicated and technical in nature. Therefore, this type of project has to comply with several “Occupational Health and Safety Guidelines” (OHS), “Environmental Health and Safety Guidelines” (EHS), and many more (Cörvers et al. 2016). The dynamic nature of this particular project simply signifies the unexpected problematic scenario in between the project cycle like project time completion, shortages of cash flow, risks in commissioning as well as installing the plant. Within the in paper mill industry, one of the major risk factors is the increment in the cost of fiber. In recent years, the utilization of large amount of waste generation and of chemicals is under scrutiny. ABC Packaging organization hasn’t properly followed the official processes of managing  project and ABC cannot work within this kind of environment following  the process of project life cycle should have been identified as well as structured within this project for achieving better results.

Cost, Benefit and Risk Evaluation

All the processes of project management are correlated with each other. ABC packaging should identify these relationships. The project management process relationships have been portrayed as follows:

Extend of Business Case – Business case should have the responsibility in terms of providing justifications to undertake a project, evaluate cost, benefits and risk associated with alternative options. It should also provide the rationale for the preferred solution. Business case preparation is the major responsibility for the project managers possibly with advisory and specialist support (Jaber et al. 2015). It must be kept up-to-date reflecting the approved changes after its approval. ABC packaging should evaluate the following things those have to be addressed typically in the business case aligned with project management.

Cost, benefit and Risk Evaluation – Project cost incorporates invisible as well as visible cost factors; project manager should carefully analyze and estimate (Bull et al. 2016). It can be dependent on the physical resources required in regards to the raw materials, machines, equipments as well as human effort in accordance with advisory, consultancy and labor.

Project Management team of ABC packaging organization has executed the project depending on the assumption that everything would go in accordance with plan. Significant cost factors like recurring cost have not been documented as well as evaluated in business case. Thus, it is essential for considering costs like the costs for training and development and other cost factors that would carry out to be incurred after the project completion. On borrowings, Interest cost has not properly documented (Mir and Pinnington 2014).

Thus, these outcomes mislead the projected financial statements. Accounting advisory should be requested to prepare income statements as well as budgeted cash flows. In this business case, project benefits have been identified in comparison with the significant benefits of developing paper mill in the country against not having a paper mill for ABC Packaging (Khan and Rasheed 2015). Hence, in this scenario, SWOT analysis can help for identifying the wide potential as well as negative risk that apply to the project. Performing qualitative risk analysis and creating risk register also helps in achieving better as well as more reliable project outcome.

Strengths (Internal)
Reputation	Well-established organization with huge popularity as a quality as well as a reliable supplier within the specialization of corrugated packaging.
Geographical	Location of Fiji is situated within the south pacific region where it can have the direct access on several implemented ports worldwide.
Sole Supplier in the region	In south pacific region, any paper mill does not manufacture grooved paper.
Capacities	Highly qualified well-trained staff and well equipped manufacturing plant.
Customers	The paper mill project already has customers because; currently this organization has been owned by a carton factory.
Weaknesses (Internal)
Labour Requirements	Specialized labour force is necessary. It is challenging for maintaining a properly trained-labour force in Fijian locations simply because of the fact that many well-trained staff are aiming on getting opportunities for migrating to New Zealand and Australia.
local transportation and Infrastructure	In Fiji, Transportation facilities are not good. Heavy vehicles and Poor Road Conditions mass limits have created several issues to transport goods.
Excessive Energy	The project of paper mill needs the requirement of excessive energy approximately about 550 kWh that is 82500 kWh per day. It is very confusing that Fiji Electricity Authority is capable enough of supplying the required energy.
Prices of increased raw material	prices of OCC or waste paper in the world are enhancing
Duty and taxes	Income tax requirements as well as high import duty can result in profit for coming down.
Opportunities (External)
Increment in consumption as well as demand	For paper, Domestic requirement can be expected to be enhanced in 2017 by 100% because of opening up of several new plants for manufacturing in the country.
Increment in several utilizations of paper	Recently, the papers are being utilized for numerous purposes.
Potential of Forest plantation	There is a huge forest area in the country that plays significant role to manufacture paper.
Low labour cost	In Fiji, Labour cost is very low in comparison to their rivals in New Zealand as well as Australia.
Export potential	A high potential is there for exporting paper into another pacific nations where they have the paper conversion’s small plants.
Threats (External)
Inexpensive Imports	From China, competitive products of worse quality are imported
Environmental issues	The industry of paper manufacturing makes a huge environmental disturbance.
Supply of OCC as well as Recovered Fibre	There shortage of Fibre as well as OCC supply worldwide for huge barriers of environment protections implemented in several nations.
Competition from existing organizations in New Zealand and Australia	Paper market within the South pacific region is dominated by the other organizations in New Zealand and Australia. Thus, ABC packaging organisation would have strategies for overcoming the threats coming from them.
Political Instability	Fiji has become strong in political and economic stability, after election held on 17th September 2014 as a result of restoring democratic rules. Nevertheless, some chances of transforming the government are possible in upcoming election that has been sceduled in 2018.

Project Time Management Plan – Time management of a project is an important part of the managing project. Nevertheless, comprehensive plan of time management plan was not present on the stage of initiating the project (Karsakov, Bilyatdinova and Hoekstra 2014). Numerous projects fail for achieving expected results on time as well as within the budget for the absence of time management plan and the cost of detailed project. Time Management Plan for a project should incorporate required procedures for finishing the project on time.

Project Phases	Project Activities within the Project Phases	Description of the Phase and Recommendations made in Literature
Idea generation	Initiation, Proposal, Concept, Ideation	This particular project implementation stage sheds light on the basis for developing a recycled fiber paper mill in the country and to highlight the costs in construction and design of a turnkey operation.
Pre Feasibility	Initial assessment, Initial investigation, Research, Preliminary investigation, Evaluation	Primary investigation for showing that ABC Packaging organization is able to manufacture annual corrugated paper requirement of the organization depending cost effectively on the standard of quality necessary by their consumers (Cicmil, Lindgren and Packendorff 2016). Cost savings identification and other advantages like access to export markets and income tax exemptions would be evaluated at this stage.
Feasibility	Complete Evaluation Investigation Authorization Business case	Feasibility study for providing assumption and project expectations based on quality, profitability and cost savings enhancement are accurate.
Development and Execution	Implementation Production Construction Realization Development and tests Build	The project design of paper mill should be submitted as well as decided for final approval. Moreover, it should obtain final certifications from the procurement of raw materials arrangements, recruiting employees, relevant government authorities and implementation of production process (Boss and Krauss 2014).
Commissioning	Validation Trial Beta Test	The stage includes trailing out the product that is fluting and linerboard medium with newly installed equipments for the validation acceptance. If required, warranty period of request modifications generally start after commissioning (Burke 2013).
Handover	Completion, Release, Acceptance Implementation	This stage encompasses step to hand on the project to the business unit. At this step, the commercial production begins. Thus, final payment would be done to the machinery suppliers.
Post Implementation Review (PIR)	Post Project Review, Project Audit	This particular stage determines what is the project impact over a certain company and whether the benefits were delivered. Reviewing figures and ensuring project deliver the profitability and expected outcomes. Project’s review performance obtains recommendation for the further improvements in future (Briand and Hodgson 2015). Inform public about the project and establish goodwill and reputation.

Conclusion

A conclusion can easily be implemented after conducting the entire study that project plan should be well-prepared for undertaking a successful project that in turns would enforce its image and position. In this context, this study has significantly portrayed the fact that the innovative project based management strategies take a significant part to achieve the organizational success factor. The project manager and sponsors should work together from the project beginning to the end for achieving the best outcomes. Detailed project management plan is always proven very important in terms of mitigating a lot regulatory, engineering and environmental issues and completing the project within budget and on time.

References

Ahern, T., Leavy, B. and Byrne, P.J., 2014. Complex project management as complex problem solving: A distributed knowledge management perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), pp.1371-1381.

Akhavan, P., Reza Zahedi, M. and Hosein Hosein, S., 2014. A conceptual framework to address barriers to knowledge management in project-based organizations. Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 7(2/3), pp.98-119.

Boss, S. and Krauss, J., 2014. Reinventing project-based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age. International Society for Technology in Education.

Briand, L. and Hodgson, D., 2015. The re-regulation of control in the context of project-based work. International Journal of Work Innovation, 1(3), pp.287-304.

Bull, J.W., Jobstvogt, N., Böhnke-Henrichs, A., Mascarenhas, A., Sitas, N., Baulcomb, C., Lambini, C.K., Rawlins, M., Baral, H., Zähringer, J. and Carter-Silk, E., 2016. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats: A SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem services, 17, pp.99-111.

Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.

Cicmil, S., Lindgren, M. and Packendorff, J., 2016. The project (management) discourse and its consequences: on vulnerability and unsustainability in project?based work. New Technology, Work and Employment, 31(1), pp.58-76.

Cörvers, R., Wiek, A., de Kraker, J., Lang, D.J. and Martens, P., 2016. Problem-Based and