Analysis
Introduction
This project belongs in the engineering-efficiency category; therefore, it has to fit at least 3 of 4 performance hurdles, which are 1. Impact on EPS; 2.Payback; 3.Discounted cash flow and 4. Internal rate of return.
In this article, some of those involved explained and described their opinions; however, professional knowledge may have been lacking. Therefore, we will expound and clarify below.
Management Analysis
Capital Expenditure
On the surface, making sure a project measures up to a range of consistent, prescribed criteria in order to be accepted would appear to be a sound business practice. But in our opinion, we think DC only focused on the financial management. We think they should utilize the strategy map strategy. A strategy map provides a uniform and consistent way to describe that strategy, so that objectives and measures can be established and managed. The strategy map provides the missing link between strategy formulation and strategy execution. (Norton and Kaplan, 2004 *1) Furthermore, DC won't only focus on the financial report; they also manage by human resource and other strategic elements. Also, any of the above financial calculations or assumption could bring the wrong settlement or the expectations will be seriously biased.
Economic / Financial Analysis
Transportation Costs
The transportation division asked that the cost of tank cars required for additional throughput should be involved in the initial outlay of the Merseyside's project was ignored by Frank Greystock. Therefore, he was not involved in the analysis of the Merseyside project.
Regardless of how departmental budgets are established, best practices in capital budgeting clearly state that all side-effects of a project must be included in cash-flow projections (Schiff, 1988 *2). In fact, transportation costs have a significant impact on cash-flows and also on the value of the project.
If adding the budget for transportation cost is ignored, and even if the Merseyside project can add total throughput, the transportation division still cannot transfer the spared throughput due to the throughput is over the ability of the original transferring utility. Therefore, there will be a charge of ₤2millions which will be added to the project.
Impact- Cannibalization& Ramp up period
The issues of two impacts are in two ways. The first one, more efficient plants are likely to cannibalize sales from the Rotterdam plant. The second one, the forecasted rate of return for customers needs to account for a ramp up period before it is possible to reach the 7% additional revenue of the project. Furthermore, the two impacts should be calculated in the project's cash flows for the final evaluation purposes.
The following table demonstrates the PV of costs, the PV of benefits and the NPV respectively, over 5-year period for the investment:
Firstly, in assessing ourselves, we determined that our BATNA associated with $37 million. I comprised the cost of building a new plant ($25 million), loss of profits in 12 months ($12 million) and the cost of 90 day option to buy land ($0.5 million). A non-refundable expense of $10 million on buying the option for the land is considered the sunk cost. The maximum amount of money that our group could spend on this buying intention is $40 million. We decided that our target point would be $16 m...
The two main issues in this case are the project analysis and financial forecasting. The project should be analyzed before doing the forecasting, because any recommendations on the project will affect financial forecasting for the next two years.
Making an investment towards a new project/product/company is hardly a simple process. Numerous factors including costs, benefits, time, and resources need to be taken into account before a decision to pursue a new project should be ventured into. At the end of the day prioritising projects and investing funds into projects that have the most potential towards favourable return on investment should be considered. Investment appraisal should not only be used for projects with a monetary return, it is also pertinent to use the tools where the return may not be easy to quantify such as training or development programs. Investment
...iple types of plants in them) rather than monoculture as found in the Old World.
As discussed, this project and its requirements highlight areas where future work/improvements can be made to increase the project and the outcome. The timeframe put on this project is something which can be changed to deliver a full implementation rather than “vanilla functionality” which would later need to be modified. Another factor to consider delivering a full implementation would be the capital investment which is used for this project as this needs to be topped
About status within your peer group. Even people on low monthly salaries would buy a high quality diamond: it was a family driven purchase.
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 ...
Projects are widely used by many organizations and government institutions in the course of conducting their business. One of the reasons for this is because they have been proven to be effective in initiating change and translating strategic programs into daily activities. However, it has been established that most projects fail to deliver on time, budget, and customer specifications. In most cases, this failure is caused by over-optimism by the project management team. This over-optimism commonly referred to as optimism bias can simply be defined as overestimating the projects benefits and conversely underestimating its cost and duration time. Research have portrayed that this is often caused by failure to properly identify, understand, and manage effectively the risk associated with the project therefore putting its success at jeopardy(Mott McDonald, 2002). Fortunately, this biasness can be detected and minimized during the project gateway process.
A company's budget serves as a guideline in planning and committing costs in order to meet tactical and strategic goals. Tactical goals such as providing budgetary costs for daily operations, and strategic objectives that include R&D, production, marketing, and distribution are all part of the budgeting process. Serving as a guideline rather than being set in stone, the budget is a snapshot of manager's "best thinking at the time it is prepared." (Marshall, 2003, p.496) The budget is a method in which to reign-in discretionary spending, and will likely show variances between what costs have been anticipated and what costs are actually incurred.
My current environment is a non-profit organization where project completion to within budget and schedule is the main goal. The program budget and schedule are derived from the excepted proposal. The program managers are the one who will determine the scope of a project using data from past similar projects, if there is one, to make educated guess of how long a project takes to complete. The estimate time the project takes to complete and the dollar amount require to do this is put in the proposal. The proposal is used as a bid for the project. If project is awarded, the program manager will design a detail cost schedule to be monitored and controlled. The estimate cost and the actual cost is closely monitor on weekly basis. If there
In the past two decades, transportation cost of cargo has decreased that has aided in improving productivity and economic growth. Nonetheless, the operations of the market forces and the rising cost of fuel as well as environmental concerns impact on the cost of transporting goods from one place to another. Subsequently, the high cost of moving goods will be felt throughout the economy affecting enter...
The project manager should also consider backup plans for the project to ensure the projectit will end within the budget limitation. There are four ways to keep budget planning from becoming a game. The first is the sSteer clear of too-precise estimates, which can imply the total time taken to finish the project is a reality and not an estimation. Stakeholders could deal with business choices by considering these evaluations. The second way is considering leverage cost-estimating experts.
Governments, as well as businesses, use the system in order to analyze the potential outcomes of certain policies or procedures. Therefore, the representations of these ideas are primarily concerned with attaining an outcome that is as best as it could possibly be, rather than being concerned with what should be considered perfect, or absolute in all cases. For this reason, issues concerning a broad range of circumstances that are difficult to be considered in any case, prefer the ability of cost benefit analysis in order to come to a more informed and accurate conclusion on the subject that is being addressed.
Westerveld, E., The Project Excellence Model®: linking success criteria and critical success factors, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 21, Issue 6, August 2003, Pages 411-418. Science Direct [Accessed 10th February 2014]