Concept explainers
B. “Smitty” Smith is a project manager for a large consumer electronics corporation. Although she has been with the company only four years, she has demonstrated an uncanny ability to bring projects in on time, meet technical specifications, and be close to budget. Her latest assignment is a project that will involve merging two existing technologies. She and her team have almost finished developing the proposal that will be presented to a management committee for approval. All that remains to be done is to develop a time estimate for the project. The team has to construct a network diagram for the project. It has three paths. The expected durations and standard deviations for the paths are listed in the following table.
What project durations (in weeks) should Smitty include in the proposal for these risks of not delivering the project on time: 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent? What are the pros and cons of quoting project times aggressively? Conservatively?
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Loose-leaf for Operations Management (The Mcgraw-hill Series in Operations and Decision Sciences)
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