Project Management – MGMT 1007 S16 Assignment #3
Working with Work Breakdown Structures, Risk Assessments, Cost Estimations, and Gantt Charts
You are the Project Manager assigned to manage a project to develop a new car for your company. You will have to decide the following things:
a) Choose between a sports car or a family sedan,
b) Choose which type of engine to use(gas, electric or hydrogen powered)
c) Choose the body material (steel, aluminum or carbon fiber)
There is a time line of 18 months to complete the design and prepare to build your first car and be ready for production. Your design decisions and supplier lists must be presented to senior management within one month from today.
The plant that the car will be built in has to be refitted with new equipment to handle the new production. The removal of the old equipment must be completed before the new equipment can be installed. It is estimated that it will take up to 6 months to remove the old equipment and prepare the plant for the new equipment to arrive. To design and build the new equipment it will take 5 to 6 months if everything goes exactly as planned. It will take 5 months to install and commission the new equipment and you will need to have at least 3 months before production is scheduled to start to trial the new equipment and train the operators and maintenance staff.
You will oversee the removal of the existing equipment, the new equipment being installed into the plant as well as the training of the employees to handle the new equipment. The plant is in the process of renegotiating the union contract with the workers. Negotiations have been going on for some time now and there has been little progress made. Both sides are getting frustrated and tensions are running high.
The gas engine that you could use is well tested and has been used in previous versions of vehicles built in your plant. It is supplied by the Oily Motor Company that was built just down the street from your plant. The reliability and quality of the engine has been very good but it is an older technology and lacks some of the newest fuel saving features.
The electric engine is a newer model and has only been in production for a year. Watt an Engine, the company that builds them, is located in Michigan and has had a number of issues with quality at the start of production. They are currently being
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restructured after being bought out by a French firm. They have had a
number of management changes and they are in the process of installing additional production equipment to increase output and improve quality control.
The hydrogen engine, built by It’s a Gas, has just entered production in a brand new facility located about 3 hours away from you. The engine has been trialed in a few vehicles and has shown very good mileage results. This engine is the most expensive option and has the least number in use of any choice. Using this engine would definitely set your company’s vehicle apart from anything else currently being offered and would be a huge technological leap forward.
The body material choices that you have are all produced by two companies that you have worked with in the past. Fibertech, a plant based in Northern Michigan produces the carbon fiber panels. You have used them in the past and have been satisfied with their quality and delivery on the last two projects that you ran. They have recently been bought out by a large company from Germany and are currently undergoing restructuring of all their departments. You have heard that there have been a large number of changes to the Management team and that a modernization of the plant including new process equipment is currently underway.
Metapan Forming is located in southern Kentucky and has been producing body panels for automotive manufacturers for three decades. They have recently begun a modernization of their plant and are currently one quarter of the way through it. They have been a non-unionized plant since they began operation but recently have been targeted by union organizing activities. Plant management believes that the union will try to organize the plant for a vote within the next 6 to 12 months.
A new metal forming plant, Flashnthepan is aggressively marketing itself and is eager to bid on this new contract. They are located in King City, Ontario, just two hours away from your facility. They began operation just 9 months ago and are working to develop their business. The plant is state of the art with the newest stamping and fabrication equipment available. Their panels are laser welded and are capable of being formed into shapes and angles that previously were not possible with older equipment and processes.
Your plant is capable of supplying all the other components that you will require for the vehicle, regardless of which type you choose.
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For this project you will need to:
1) Create a WBS for all tasks that you can determine that need to be completed to create and build your vehicle. You do not have to go into the detail of the actual building of the vehicle. You can group the tasks associated with the building into 5 or 6 tasks. Your WBS should consist of at least 20 tasks.
2) You will also have to create a detailed risk assessment for all the risks that you feel might affect your project.
3) Create a risk matrix and show how you ranked your risks. Your matrix can be created in Excel and then copy and paste into Word for the electronic submission.
4) Create mitigation strategies for any risks you determine fall into the red category. Identify the mitigation strategy that you would use for each risk.
5) Create a list of all the costs that you feel would be associated with this project.
6) Create a chart to categorize your costs into the 8 different types. This can be created in Excel and handled the same as above.
7) Create a Gantt chart from information that will be released to you. Be sure to include the linkages for each task and include milestone indicators from the information provided in the assignment details.
This assignment must be submitted as a Microsoft word document and will be submitted both electronically to the drop box and as a hard copy to my drop box (#31) in room T3010. Due dates are posted on the class site on FOL. Please make sure that your hard copy is submitted before 4:00 on the due date as that is when the office closes.

© Schott, Raymond | MGMT-1007 F15 FANSHAWE COLLEGE