Business Case Analysis

2011 Words5 Pages

Introduction Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and have not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the project. Franklin Electronics won the contract because they had the lowest price. They developed a work breakdown structure that consisted of 45 work packages with 4 of the work packages being delivered in the first 4 months. They also developed a simple status report consisting of the work packages due, budgeted cost for work scheduled, budgeted cost for work performed, actual cost for work performed, cost variance and price variance. When they deliver the first status report, the Franklin Electronics project manager is called into an emergency meeting because Spokane Industries vice president is unhappy with the progress. In this paper, we will discuss Six Sigma process improvement for tracking time and cost, recommendations on how Franklin Electronics can use project management principles to meet their goal of improving efficiency and empowering management to make better and informed decisions through the use of Earned Value Management, how an effective Earned Value Management System contributes ... ... middle of paper ... ...f The Quality Assurance Institute, 12. Kerzner, H. (2013). Franklin Electronics. In H. Kerzner, Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (pp. 839-841). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Kerzner, H. (2013). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Kim, B. &. (2011). Combination of project cost forecasts in earned value management. Journal Of Construction Engineering & Management, 958-966. Sitnikov, C. (2012). Six sigma as a strategic tool for companies. Young Economists Journal / Revista Tinerilor Economisti, 94-102. Townsend, L. A. (2014). A schedule-performance approach for level-of-effort tasks. Engineering Management Journal, 21-30. Webb, C. (2014). Labor Cost Vs. Material Cost. Retrieved from Chron.com: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/labor-cost-vs-material-cost-11368.html

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