What is a Gantt Chart and why is it important?

Cell Phone Design Process

You work for Motorola in the global cell phone group. You have been made operations/project manager for the design of a new cell phone model. Your supervisors have already scoped the project so you have a list showing the work breakdown structure and this includes major activities. You must plan the production schedule and calculate production duration. Your boss wants the schedule on his desk tomorrow morning! You have been given the information below. It includes all of the activities required and the duration of each activity. Also, dependencies between the activities have been identified. Remember that the preceding activity must be fully completed before work on the following activity can be started. It is divided into five major production processes. Process “P” involves developing specifications for the new cell phone. Here decisions related to such things as battery life, size of the phone and features need to be determined. These details are based on how a customer uses the cell phone. These user specifications are redefined in terms that have meaning to the subcontractors that will actually make the new cell phone in Process “S” supplier specifications. These involved engineering details for how the product will perform. The individual components that make up the product are the focus of Process “D”. Process “I” brings all of the components together and a working prototype is built and tested. Finally in Process “V”, vendors are selected and contracts are negotiated.

1.  1    Produce a network diagram that includes all of the activities. What is a network diagram and why is it important?
2.  2    Produce a Gantt chart that includes all of the activities. What is a Gantt Chart and why is it important?
3.  3    Calculate start and finish times for each activity. Assuming a start date of 10/1/2015, what is the finish date?
4.   4   What is the total number of weeks for completing the process?
5.   5   Which activities have slack? What is slack?
6.    6  Which activities are on the critical path? Why do we use the critical path in scheduling?
7.    7  Your boss would like you to suggest changes that could be made to production that would significant shorten it. What would you suggest?