Project Management for Warehousing Requirements

Question: Discuss about the Project Management for Warehousing Requirements. Answer: Organizational Setting The project is fulfilling the warehousing requirements, effectively, by integrating the stock movement operations of Futuris automotives, as part of its effective strategic direction, to ease the process of manufacturing facilities, located in South Australia. Futuris initiated and implemented this project, to consolidate the warehousing facilities, to integrate into a single operating site, so that the operational overhead costs can be reduced in the future (Curlee Wanda, 2011). Project environment The project environment can be perceived to be a black and white communication and every communication and correspondence is recorded as agreements. When the communication and correspondence is done in written and agreements, the conflicts or miscommunications are less likely. All the objectives along with the quality criteria are set clearly and budget estimations, roles of each of the stakeholder is also given in the project review meetings, perceived as an assumption. Objectives The primary objective of the project is to integrate Plexicor into the Futuris DC, for optimistic impact over the storage capacity in the warehouse, towards fulfilling the additional space requirement of 2695 spaces, for bringing and placing the stock from other site, by changing the current layout into a new layout. Importance of the Project to the Organisation Stock in multiple locations will lead to additional transport burdens and eventually, increased expenses and budget, in overall operations of the company. It leads to increased cost per piece of product and thereby, conversion of the customer to competitor. Eventually, cutting the expenses over the operations would benefit the company, by serving better to the customers. In this context, the Futuris experiences additional budget and burden, from the multiple stock locations, additional staff, transportation, from stocking the items in multiple locations in South Australia (Kousholt, 2007). This burden can be relieved, by integrating the warehousing facilities into one place that would improve material handling system also. The company can save $120,000 every year, approximately. Project Definition The warehousing project is integrating the stock operations in one site, to better integrate the manufacturing facilities, from Plexicor into Futuris DC for Futuris. Project Challenges The project, though do not have serious or major challenges, it is associated with certain constraints, such as ensuring of ongoing support of the warehouse facilities for stock delivery requirements, for first half duration of the year 2010. Another constraint is that the entire project has to be completed within the budget of $150,000. These are not major constraints or challenges and expected to overcome, easily, with better project performance (Cleland Gareis, 2006). Scope The warehouse integration project has the scope that the stock and material present in Futuris DC and Plexicor are to be integrated and accommodated in a single location, called Futuris DC, in Futuris. Ensuring the financial benefits and ease of operations are out of scope of this project, as this project has the scope of integrating the stock and material into one place, only (PMI, 2010). Project Plan Initially, an agreement is done among the teams of Futuris Materials handling, Futuris production and Ceva logistics, so that interruptions as well as the stock discrepancies will not be occurring and concern of OH S also addressed, towards moving the products to the new manufacturing facility from the current location. The project is planned to executed in three steps, reviewing the present Futuris DC warehouse location, based on requirement, changing the layout and moving and re-assembling the units and stock (Lock, 2007). The planning of the project is done extensively, with the following steps. Review of viability of storage of materials present in DC and perform the recommendations accordingly, after estimating and confirming the total Plexicor storage required, both in terms of bulk storage as well as the racking storage requirement Then the project estimation is done, in terms of budget, after confirmation of the additional storage that is possible to accommodate the new products and confirmation of any additional storage is required, than the available storage For additional storage, 3 quotes are requested Then the labour required to implement the project is estimated and then confirmed, in terms of labour hours and then the number of labour required After confirmation and estimation, the process of approvals is done, after estimation of the budget and other resources Then integrate Plexicor material storage in Futuris DC, which is started with considering the material into location and estimating the total material to be shifted The material in Plexicor is removed initially, from current storage locations, in which all inventory is moved temporary staging area and then review of physical inventory to system levels is done and later corrections done, if any errors are occured Then the line marking in Future DC is done accordingly, considering the existing material in DC as well as the new material to be accommodated from Plexicor. It is started with removing the present lining and then new line marking is done. After the new line marking is done, the overall racking installation is done, in which the current racking is disassembled, new racking is assembled and finally, re-assembling of the overall racking is done. Then finally, the material from Plexicor is then moved and placed into the new storage locations in DC, it is done in three steps, starting from creation of new storage locations in the system and labelling physical storage locations and moving all the inventory into the new location. The overall planning and implementation is done in the right way, logically, sequential manner, without any conflicts and without any of the disturbances. Scheduling Resources Resources are the major strengths as well as the weaknesses of the project management team. Resources of the project can be opportunity to use them in an optimistic ways and the same can become threat, when not used properly or in the right manner. So, attention is needed for these areas, to develop the schedule of teh project, so that the bottlenecks of the project can be identified, right before the commencement of the project (Dinsmoer et al., 2005). The project needs various kinds of resources, majorly human resources, time and budget resources and human resources and time are considered here. The project needed five project stakeholders, who have active involvement in to the project. Project sponsor, acted by Operational Manager of Futuris Project manager, acted by MP L Manager Team Member 1, who is Ceva supervisor Team Member 2, who is Ceva Logistics engineer Team Member 3, who is materials handling supervisor Since the entire active project stakeholders, participating actively and directly into the implementation of the project are from the same company, they know, in and out of the company and are aware of the total environment of the company, including warehouse site locations as well as the material to be handled. The overall stakeholders for the project are Furturis Automotive, Ceva logistics, third party contractors and Unions. Though third party contractors and Unions play passive role, the overall project implementation and performance, would influence their operations and future business potential with Futuris. Time is another important aspect for consideration, which also influence the total success of the project. The project has spent most of its time for racking installation, which is a long and tedious process for accommodating both the old and the new racks and stock items. Then relocation of the product has taken more time, which involves loading, transportation and unloading of the stock items from Plexicor to Futuris DC. When the scheduling and planning is done, the public holidays are not considered, it seems. So, item 2, which is repositioning the existing racking has taken long time, because of the public holidays. Three public holidays, related to Easter has prolonged the total project schedule, to significantly distant start date and end date. If the schedule is considered, to start the project, either after these public holidays or completed before these holidays, the total number of days spent for project could have been decreased or minimized. All the tasks are given enough timing and however, time spent for review meetings can be decreased to some extent, as 35 hours is considerably more for the entire project, since there are a few tasks involved in the project. Operator training is given enough importance, since it will make the future stock movement operations easier enough, minimizing accidents or delays. So, the time spent in review meetings can be minimized and spent for the operator training. Scheduling Costs As per the planning of the project, the total budget of the project should not exceed $150,000. However, the project has been completed successfully, with the budget of $131,374. It shows better performance and controlled scheduling costs of the project. The overall performance, in terms of the budget and costing can be analyzed to be better. However, it cannot be said that the total budget is completed within the specified amount, as specified above. It is because, item 6 is not completed, and the level of barriers installed is not up to the mark or requirement (Filicetti John, 2007). So, additional budget will be required, in order to complete item 6, which is fixing barriers, completely. Major scheduled cost is spent for new racking system in the warehouse and then for repositioning the existing racking system. More than the labour cost, material cost is increased, and it is a good sign as the material has some amount of return, as it can be considered as a property. On an overall, it can be analyzed that the budget is optimally utilized for implementation of the project. Risk Management Risk management is an effective and efficient tool, which would be in the project manager or project management hand. It is possible that even well planned as well as well executed projects may result in unfavorable outcome, because of unfavorable reasons or unfavorable factors that can sudden or accidental in nature. In this warehouse requirement project, the project management team had to account for different kinds of and many kinds of natural risks that are quite possible to occur, though these are rarely happened in nature. The project is dealing with the stock as well heavy equipment, such as racks, etc., which are well prone to accidents and also wear-out easily, because of mishandling. So, adequate risk management steps had to be taken, to ensure that the workforce or the team members of the project are affected, in terms of health and minimize the loss of property (Harrison Lock, 2004). Risk management is perceived to be done better. It is because each and every step has been taken so calculatedly and for each and every significant and major task, the prior approval from the authorities has been taken. Approval from relative departments to perform tasks related to that specific department, would involve the hierarchy of the department, and they become active stakeholders, and higher authorities, approve, only after confirmation that there would not be any risks associated to the respective department. For example, the project management has taken the approval for entering into supplier contracts, expenditure approvals, program design, development, tooling and expenditure, capital expenditure, etc., and it shows a clear indication of opening scope of assessing the risks associated by the authorities, as well, apart from the project management team. Most of the major risk events are anticipated and the necessary measures are taken. The major risk events anticipated are failure to support manufacturing material delivery requirements with optimum material delivery systems, increased cost over run from increased headcount, failure of IT, project cost over-run. All these risks are well anticipated and the necessary actions, to mitigate and prevent are also taken, as per the report given for the project. It would also be good, if natural calamities, or extreme weathers are also taken into consideration, since these events are possible, though are not regular, but logically, possible. In addition to the identified possible risk events, it has to be acknowledged that the contingency fund is allocated and to the optimum levels or percentage, up to 15%, which is fair enough. Performance Management The overall project is analyzed to have good performance, since it is completed within the budget, scope and considerably in less, time, though there are three public holidays, which have prolonged the overall schedule of the project (Kotter, 2011). The project has been successful, in terms of completion of the tasks successfully, because of an important factor, coordination of the stakeholders, though from different departments, companies and from different locations. Clear agreements among the three departments and domains have led the project to go smoother and with no conflict, or disturbances of the operations, related to stock delivery and storage. Toolbox is also a good and instant communication method that has been enabled between the Ceva logistics materials handlers and Futuris materials handlers. All the other stakeholders are well communicated and informed about the project update in the weekly project review meeting minutes. The weekly project review meeting minutes are conducted on Wednesdays, however, could have been better, if conducted in beginning of the week, on Monday or weekend, on Friday. However, as long as there are no coordination issues and no disturbances in their combined tasks, the schedule is expect ed to be done well. The overall project is well recorded, both physically and digitally. The project related data, such as Cap Ex forms, purchase orders, supplier invoices, employee timesheets and safety sign off are well recorded in computer as well as in written formats and the locations of storage of both physical data and digital data are also specified clearly. It can be perceived as a good performance criteria, as the overall project implementation can be a recorded project experience that can be well and easily accessed in the future for similar future projects. It could decrease the effort to be put right from the scratch, to conduct similar projects. The intermediate performance is an important method to define the overall performance of the project. The regular performance, in terms of budget review is conducted on a regular basis. These meetings are project review meeting, open issues meeting, steering committee meeting and budget review meeting, conducted on weekly or fortnight basis. Another important and best part of performance determination criteria is setting the quality criteria, though some of these criteria are subjective in nature. Flawless Plexicor product integration, zero lost production time, adequate training of the operators, no outstanding safety issues, related to the changes of the layout and weekly review meetings, for continuing and layout change are the quality criteria set and defined. If all these criteria set is met by the end of the project, which is not specified, then the project is confidently said to be completed with much better performance. Conclusion The project, warehouse integration of two sites into one site is a project that is analyzed to be completed successfully, based on the information provided in the report of the project. 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