Final Project Plan In the application of the concepts learned in this course, you will compile a comprehensive project plan for a project of your choosing. This can be a personal project (such as a ho

Running head: HEUBLEIN: PLANNING A PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL SYSTEM 0

Heublein: Planning a Project Management and Control System

Stephener Baisey

Columbia Southern University

February 16, 2021

Heublein: Planning a Project Management and Control System

Heublein Inc is a firm that primarily develops, manufacture, and markets consumer foods and beverage production domestically and at international Market. Heublein Inc.'s level of risk-taking is relatively low as per the case. This is because Heublein management focuses on project planning rather than project control. The firm mission is to achieve better performance on the project and mitigate the risks before they could affect the project performance during project execution. The effort put in place to mitigate risk within the project planning at Heublein Inc. includes implementing a project management and control system (PM&C) to improve execution and strategy of improving the use of capital funds.

According to Meredith et al., (2019), there were execution weaknesses that include over-budgeting, and the need to optimize the capital funds intensified because the legislation was not keeping pace with the inflationary rise in cost. For that reason, a project management and control system (PM&C) could be used to justify financial budgeting and capital appropriation. The implementation of the PM&C involves the director of the engineering department and providing education to ensure the team involved in project design and planning are committed to the success of the project and well versed with basic project management principles.

Project management planning is concerned with deciding in advance on what, when, how, and who will take the right action to accomplish the set objective. In this case, Heublein corporate management developed a project introduction that explained the justification of the project. The project objectives were developed that defines clear, comprehensible, measurable, and tangible objectives. Besides, planning included project structure, program cost, network, scheduled, resource allocation, organization and accountability, control system, and milestones or project division. The scheduling technique includes work breakdown structure (WBS). According to Meredith et al., (2019), WBS is a listing of tasks to be performed to achieve the project objectives.

WBS organized work into smaller, more manageable pieces (Miranda et al., 2019). The format used in the Heublein project was a hierarchical numbering system showing cost summarized for the PM&C program plan. Another technique used by Heublein Corporate management in implementing PM&C includes the Gantt chart. This is a visual project management technique that creates a visual timeline across the life cycle of the project with start and end dates. PM&C program was controlled using the Gantt convention using schedule bars to show plans and filling those bars to show performance (Meredith et al., 2019). This made it easy to track progress periodically. Another technique used includes the critical path method (CPM).

These techniques help in computing the longest path from the planned task to their completion including the earliest and latest time (Amri et al., 2020). This task can start and finish without impacting the project schedule. After knowing the critical task then it is possible to delay other tasks without lengthening the project timeline. In this case, the critical path facilitates planning, implementation, and control. According to Meredith et al., (2019), greater emphasis was placed on the network creation and analysis technique in the educational phase of the PM&C program. This is because the network was the basis of scheduling and it presented potentially greater value.

The theoretical aspect of budgeting and how Heublein uses budgeting concepts and management application.

Top-down budgeting which is a cost estimation method involves estimating the overall project cost as well as the cost of the major subproject that comprise it. The cost is further given to the lower-level managers who further break down those costs to budget estimates for the specific task and work packages that comprise the subproject (Meredith et al., 2019). Bottom-up budgeting is the budgeting process where the people doing the work are consulted regarding time and budget for the task. The purpose of this procedure is to ensure the accuracy of the budget is achieved. Work element costing is the combination of the top-down or bottom-up whereby each work element in the action plan or WBS is evaluated for its resource requirement and the cost of each resource is estimated (Meredith et al., 2019).

Heublein can employ top-down budgeting where top managers in the engineering department may use their experience and judgment to propose the cost of the major subproject that comprises it (Meredith et al., 2019). Then cost estimates are further given to lower-level managers within the engineering department to breakdown the budget estimates to a specific task and work packages that make up the subprojects. Using this budgeting process top-level managers can effectively control the budget by maintaining their budgetary position making the lower managers accept the budget even when they perceived the budget to be insufficient (Meredith et al., 2019). This budgeting process might help to manage Heublein's budget by preventing situation that might leads to over budgeting.

This is because top managers force low-level managers to allocate costs based on the cost they have estimated. Furthermore, Bottom-up budgeting can be employed by Heublein using work breakdown structure (WBS) whereby the people doing the work are consulted regarding time, budget for the task (Meredith et al., 2019). The estimates are made in terms of resources such as labor and material and the estimates are later converted into dollar equivalent. The budget estimates achieved are then given the direct total cost of the project reserve for contingencies and profit figures to arrive at the final project budget (Meredith et al., 2019). The budgeting process allows a participative approach making it possible to achieve a more accurate idea of resource requirements than when the project cost estimates arise from the top manager.

Therefore Heublein would be able to better plan and budgeting cost for each task hence preventing any the incidence of under budgeting. Heublein corporate management may utilize both top-bottom and Bottom-up budgeting to accurately budget for the project cost. In this budgeting process, each task in the WBS is evaluated for its resource requirement and the cost of the resource estimated (Meredith et al., 2019). This budgeting process gives a clear picture of estimating cost and then allocating each task cost by utilizing top-level experience and consulting with lower-level management.

Even though Heublein is concern about budget control and financial appropriation still it needs to be mindful of the social and political consequences of the crisis or events that might affect the overall project. Stakeholders might significantly affect the success of the project regardless of the project planning program put in place so long as the stakeholders are not effectively compensated or involved. Therefore, stakeholders’ participation, proper reward system aligned with corporate culture will promote effective management of the organization resources.

References

Amri, A. U., & Latief, Y. (2020). A Work Breakdown Structure-Based Material Requirement Planning Information System Using Building Information Modeling for Flat Construction Project. Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience, 17(2), 1117-1126.

Meredith, J. R. Shafer, S.M., & Mantel, S.J. (2019). Project management a strategic managerial approach. John Wiley and Son Australia, Ltd.

Miranda, S., & Sugarindra, M. (2019, May). Utilizing project management software in project scheduling: a case study. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 528, No. 1, p. 012037). IOP Publishing.