Task and Questions on Traditional Functional Structure and Project Management

1. “Sometimes optimising individual parts, or just one activity of the process, may inadvertently be damaging the end result.”

  i. Explain the meaning of the statement above in the context of traditional, functional structure of organizations.

 ii. Describe ONE example of the statement above in the context of traditional, functional structure of organizations. Hint. You can think about conflicting goals among different                   functions in an organization.  

iii. Describe how to address the problem of the statement above in the context of traditional, functional structure of organizations.

2.Now you as an Operations manager are undertaking a project to improve manufacturing process that produces Covid-19 PCR test kits. Due to urgent demand in the market, your CEO wants to have clear ideas regarding the timeline of the project. Based on the time information of activities in the table below, answer the following questions. For any decimals in your workings including final answers, round off to two decimal places.

Note. As you see the table below, your time information is incomplete. Therefore, you have collected additional data and figured that, for the unknown optimistic time (X) of activity C, you can actually use the first number appears in your student ID number (e.g.,X = 2 if your student ID numberis ‘245397987’)

What is your ‘X’?

      i.     Calculate the Expected times and Variances of activities (fill the blanks below).

Show your calculation and/or workings here:

   ii.     What are the Critical path, its expected duration, and its path variance?

Show your calculation and/or workings here:

    iii.     What is the probability of completing project (along critical path) within one week earlier than your expected duration?

 Show your calculation and/or workings here:

   iv.     What is the probability of completing project (along critical path) within two weekslater than your expected duration?

Show your calculation and/or workings here:

    v.     By how many weeks are you 94% sure of completing project (along critical path)?

Show your calculation and/or workings here: